Video and sound freezes after 15 - 20 minutes

[gamerstu]

Hello all! In my quest to free myself from the shackles of Tivo, I've been investigating Sage.tv. I'm on day 3 of the 15 day trial, and have been slowly tackling all of the issues encountered. This last one, though, I can't correct:

No matter what I try (updating drivers, changing decoders, tweaking system settings), I can't prevent the picture and sound from freezing after about 20 minutes of play time. I do get an error prompt from sage: -6,0x80004005, Problem setting up hardware video compression. The OS still responds, and I have to close-out Sage and reboot before I can get tv again. Suggestions?

System:

Athlon 1800
256 MB Ram
120 gig HD
Windows ME (all patches applied)
Hauppauge PVR USB2 (updated drivers)
have tried the following decoders: hauppauge, PowerDVD
VIA patches applied, MSI K7T266 Pro bios updated

[korben_dallas]

Video card or integrated video? Sound card or integrated sound?

Just a guess here, but that 1800 w/ 256MB may be struggling to keep up if you are using integrated sound and video, which could cause an overheating situation.

[mls]

Originally Posted by gamerstu

Windows ME (all patches applied)

Hate to say it, but think that says it all without me having to.

[gamerstu]

Yeah, a buddy of mine a work insists that my first order of business should be to install XP. I'm convinced now that Sage is not the problem--the WinTV app freezes after a while too.

Regarding the hardware, I think it should be able to handle the load. The sound is intgrated, but I've got an AGP video card (32 megs RAM). The Hauppauge I use has a built-in encoder, though the decoder is software. Maybe I should bump up to 512 megs, but I want to see how the upgraded OS will work first.

I checked my temps: CPU 115F, System 102F

[mdmint]

I agree you're hardware will likely handle SageTV load ok. It's not really that processor intensive. SageClient works fine on my wife's workstation with a lowly AMD 1600+. However, her system is running XP Pro. I also agree that Windows ME (Most ErrorProne) was the most atrocious rendition of Windows ever released.

[gamerstu]

OK, I've got XP Pro on there now. I still froze, but this time it took two hours for it to happen. There has to be something wrong with the hardware. I'd guess overheating, but my temps don't look too bad. The mobo is running a little hot (102F), but 115F isn't bad for an Athlon, I don't think. The Ram isn't the best. It's supposedly PC133 DDR (266FSB), but I may scale it back to 100 (200) just to see if that helps the heating. I don't think it will materially affect performance. Suggestions?

[m1abrams]

102F is actually a bit warm for a motherboard temp. Not that most hardware can not handle that temp, it would cause problems with hardware that may be flaky.

See if you can bring the temp. down via moving the box, remove the case cover blowing cold air on it. See if that fixes the issue, and that will tell you if you need to fix some hardware or its an driver/software problem.

[wbarber69]

Is there any possibility that your harddrive is full

[LowTech]

Gamer,

Did you do a fresh install of XP or did you install one of those upgrades?

[gamerstu]

Hey all, thanks for the great responses!

Nope, my HD is darn near empty, because (in answer to LowTech's question) I did a low-level format and completely installed XP Pro.

I'm happy to report that the issue appears to be entirely heat related. I installed a HD fan and a card slot fan (next to the GeForce), and haven't had a freeze in 12 hours! Now what the hell do I do about the noise? It sounds like I run a data center in my living room. :-)

[gamerstu]

Ugh. Not so fast. Had two freezes again last night.