computer freezes weekly

[bcdudley]

Hi everyone. I have been using GB-Pvr for a few months now and have been able to get it working with only a few minor problems that I was able to resolve by reading the forums here. I think I am down to my last issue with having it fully functional and working the way I want it.

My pvr system is a dedicated and purpose built system When I installed GB-Pvr it was on a fresh load of windows with all new hardware. The MB is an ECS P4M800pro-m (if that matters to anyone). The cpu is a P4 Intel 2.66 (not a celeron). 512mb ram. The video is a MSI Geforce FX 5200. It has a Hauppauge PVR-150 and for network access it has a D-Link wireless usb adapter (802.11b). I originally was running this system on a via epia 1ghz system but that proved to be way to slow to be practical for what I needed and it would lock up frequently so I upgraded to the 2.66ghz cpu and mb. The system performance is excellent now but it still locks up.

When the system locks up, the screen stays at the GB-Pvr menu but does not respond to keyboard or remote control inputs, or VNC connection requests.

The 2 consistent patterns that I have noticed.
1: In the event logs, the wireless network adapter will show that it has connected to the network and initiateded normal operation. It shows this about once a minute but does not show any disconnects.
2: After rebooting, the system always boots to the integrated video card and requires a power cycle to reset to the agp card (no bios option to disable integrated)

It will run great for several days and then will go lock up again. The wireless network connection messages come and go at random intervals.

At the time I put it all together, I used all the latest drivers from the manufacturers web sites.

Any suggestions at this point would be appreciated.

Oh, and one last thing. Congratulations Sub on creating a great piece of software.

[JonnyCam]

Hello,

Does your video card get too hot when the PC has locked up? Maybe it's a hardware heat issue.

I think on the FX 5200 driverfs there is an option to (Recover GPU?) which allows the video card to reset itself (something like that)

Take a look at those options and maybe check them on google to see if they can make your AGP card boot automatically.

You could also set a timer to autoamtcially restart the PC at some stage every 3 days or something. (you might have to have it do a check to ensure nothing is being recorded, or is to be recorded int he next 1 minute.

Thanks

[bcdudley]

I had thought about the heat issue as well and a few weeks ago I added an extra case fan. The Video card is passively cooled so that could still be an issue. I did not see the recover gpu option anywhere and a quick google search leads me to believe that might be an ATI only option.

Something I just tried, but I will have to wait to see if it make a difference, I set the monitor to shut off after 10 minutes of not being used, Before, I had it set to always on.

I think my next steps from here are going to be.
1. check for a mb bios update
2. upgrade the wireless network card to a "G" or "N"
3. find a better cooling solution for the video card.

I am going to test it like this for a few days and see how it goes.
Thanks for the response.

[JonnyCam]

Oops - I have an Nvidia & ATI card in my 2 PC's - getting a little confused, brain gettin fried from being at work!)

Thanks