Extenders slow after power outage

[pjpjpjpj]

I was away on vacation last week and our neighborhood had a power outage which outlasted the UPS life on my server PC and also on my switch and router. The switch and router came back on when the power returned, and the server PC was restarted by my neighbor a day later (I spoke with him on the phone, he came over and turned it on).

Since returning, all of our extenders - HD300s and HD200s - are very slow. They seem to boot up at normal speed, but when the UI appears, it takes several seconds for the background picture to appear. Then, when moving through menu items, the focus moves fairly quickly (almost normally), but it takes as much as 5 seconds or so before the background pic appears. Right-arrowing or selecting menu items are a few seconds slow, and UI graphics stutter somewhat before appearing.

No videos are playable, nor is live TV. When pressing play, it acts like it will play (time bar appears and such) but a spinning circle appears, and I get a popup "playback exception" error. After OKing out of that error, it starts to play while the spinning circle continues, but will only play a few frames, then pause a couple of seconds, then a frame or two, more pause, repeat. In other words, unwatchable. When I press stop, it takes as much as 30 seconds, maybe more, before the stop dialog window pops up.

I confirmed on the server that everything which has recorded is fine, so the network connection between the server and my two HDHRs is fine. Videos are playable via Sage on the server itself, and the Sage menus on the server work smoothly/normally, so it's not the Sage software itself. The server has no internet connectivity issues, and I can access Sage via the webserver plugin and stream videos just fine, so it's not anything with my router. Everything else on my network is working fine. It's apparently something weird with the server talking to the extenders.

In desperation, I checked on the HD300 for firmware updates, and discovered that it had lost the updates I'd previously installed. I installed them, including the latest HD300 beta firmware update. It did not fix anything, but I find it strange that this occurred. I will have to go check the HD200s and see if they lost their firmware updates.

Anyone have any ideas on how I can test to see what's going on? I'm clueless about network testing terminology so treat me like your mom if you give instructions.

[pjpjpjpj]

I tried accessing some videos on my server through my laptop (just using the home network, Windows "Homegroup") and they stuttered and struggled a bit too. So there appears to be an issue with streaming from my server. I would say maybe a broad NIC issue at the server but the server itself is recording full HD from OTA broadcasts on the HDHRs (as I mentioned above), so it's not a complete server NIC issue, just apparently an outgoing issue.

[firenice]

pjpj

I've had this issue before and performing a scandisk on my server cleared it up. Power outages can play hell on a hard drive. In fact, even with a battery backup mine came down once because a breaker had tripped. The result was that while everything worked fine Sage was sluggish with the extenders and the server was throwing odd events in the event logs.

Some times I have to unplug the extenders for a period of time after a power outage also. They tend to go into a limbo where they are on but not on at the same time. Worse case would be having to reflash the extender but if more than one is involved it would be highly unlikely that this would be required. An odd thing is another extender in a seperate room can cause this even though it is not on.

Good Luck

[pjpjpjpj]

Thanks, I will give the scandisk a try. I did have all of my extenders completely unplugged during my trip (due to the fact that they come on after a power outage, I hedged my bets and ended up being correct), so the extenders should not have taken any damage. I have seen behavior like this (though not to this extreme) in the past and a few reboots of the server and switch/router always cleared it up.

I will give that a go this evening and report back....

[pjpjpjpj]

Alright, no dice on that. The OS drive with Sage on it is an SSD with Win8.1-64 and set to "optimize" automatically, so there was no real option to do much with it. Do you have a third-party scan program you use?

Otherwise, I need advice on how to get error reports (or where to activate them and where to look for the output) to try to figure out what's going on.

[firenice]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

Alright, no dice on that. The OS drive with Sage on it is an SSD with Win8.1-64 and set to "optimize" automatically, so there was no real option to do much with it. Do you have a third-party scan program you use?

Otherwise, I need advice on how to get error reports (or where to activate them and where to look for the output) to try to figure out what's going on.

pjpj

You can run chkdsk x: /f (x: is the drive letter) at he command prompt. The /f switch just checks the file system for problems. The optimize automatically will trim the drive occasionaly, defrag for ssd's, but will not check the file system. Avoid using the /r switch with chkdsk since it check each block and is not required on a ssd.

[pjpjpjpj]

Thanks, I will try that tonight.

Also see that I posted about this issue in the "Community" forum here, trying to get more eyeballs (and since I'm starting to think it's not an extender issue, per se): http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=61551

[firenice]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

Thanks, I will try that tonight.

Also see that I posted about this issue in the "Community" forum here, trying to get more eyeballs (and since I'm starting to think it's not an extender issue, per se): http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=61551

pjpj

I agree that this does not sound like a network issue. If you have rebooted all computers, routers and switches then it's back to file or files error(s). Network problems would show up on more than one piece of hardware if that were the case.

[pjpjpjpj]

Problem resolved by installing a new NIC. See final post of my other thread in the Community forum.

Thanks, guys.