Chobby playback

[wtg]

By reconfiguration i mean a complete new install of windows, drivers, the works. Usually, when I have no "complaints" in "device drivers" under computer administration Im happy about the driver configuration however something is apparently wrong. The thing is that things worked before I had to reinstall windows so i would rule out hardware problems. DMA is enabled on the system (properties of IDE channel).

Honestly it sounds more like a motherboard chipset problem than a video card chipset issue, since the video card and drivers would have no effect on the MVPs. And do you know what caused the hard drive to die? If you had a power surge or some other trouble, perhaps some of your other hardware took a hit too, but just hasn't up and died yet. A few more things to try...

• Double-check MB chipset drivers. Windows has a lot of generic drivers that will work with a wide-range of motherboards, network cards, USB host adapters and so forth. There won't be little yellow exclamation points in the device maanger, but the drivers aren't optimized and can be must less efficient or capable than the ones designed specifically for the MB. It's also easy to download the wrong MB drivers from a manufacturers website - like NForce 3 drivers when you really needed NForce 4. You've probably already triple-checked, but if not, start here.
  
• What mode is your HD controller using writing to the drive? With DMA enabled it should be using one of the Ultra DMA modes. If it's fallen back to PIO mode, it'll cause all kinds of issues.
  
• Double check the network card drivers - again, generic ones aren't usually as good - and perhaps do a little throughput test. If your nic is about to die, it can slow the whole system down, not just the network card.
  
• Temporarily disable unnecessary hardware in the device manager and then check playback. One bad device on the PCI bus can put a stutter in everything, and you may find more than just the hard drive took a hit.

Good luck! Let us know what you find out.

[JakobO]

Thks ... The HD probably died because of heat ... had a fan that stopped working.
Apparently the HD controller is using UDMA mode 6, so this looks fine!

Plan is to start with removing display drivers all together and then installing new ones. After that i wil make a "quadrupole-check" on all device drivers. If this is not working i will install the system on another HD, using the old gbpvr version (GBPVR09709) from when my system actually worked... and if this is not working i will buy another mob ... and start all over again :-)

[JakobO]

Removed & Reinstalled display drivers - no effect. Reinstalled all mob drivers - no effect. Reinstalled OS (XP), mob drivers, applied srvpck2, .net 1.1 and 2, display drivers ... before mentioned problem with no advanced display driver setting reoccured. Changed display card (had a pci-E, ASUS ATI EAX 550 GE) - installed latest drivers ... same problem. But now atleast i get a warning from ati control center that the display driver is not working correct!
Proceeded with installing pvr500 drivers, nvidia trial decoder, gbpvr .... and the installation process is halted due to a problem with the "psiparser" (error message attached) ... havent seen this message before.
Logically i would like to think that the hardware problem which started alle this - a broken down disc, was an isolated problem, ie still think it is unlikely that my mob should have been affected by the same problem ... but when running into these new problems, idears about buying a new mob comes into mind!!

Conclusion so far is that there is no hardware problems with the display cards - it is unlikely that both my cards are faulty ... it is however likely that im experiencing some sort of mob problems ... could be hardware related, anyway im convinced that the problem with chobby playback is related to some sort of local driver problem (wrong drivers or faulty hardware) and not related to mvp/network/gbpvr/windows update(security fixes) or other software applications.

I dont know if anyone can benifit from this info ... i will continue a couple of days with trial and error - and eventually if there is no progress i will probably go for a new mob!

[sub]

.... and the installation process is halted due to a problem with the "psiparser" (error message attached) ... havent seen this message before.

The usual reason for this error during install is because the user forgot to install vcredist_x86.zip.

[JakobO]

Yes, the vcredist_x86 fixed that problem. The reason why i havent seen that message before it never became an issue before i followed an advice from the "Disappointing MPEG2 decoding" thread, suggestion not to apply all the windows security updates to a fresh install of win xp.
After applying the vcredist_x86 i was able to check the playback via mvp on a fresh winxp install and it seems like the chobby playback issue has been fixed.
So the cure for mee was to reinstall win xp, and not apply all the windows security updates. As mentioned in previous posts I only applied srvpck2, .net 1.1 and 2.
I havent got the time (patience) to ask "why" or what security update is making my system performance unstable in regards to playing back video via the mvp ... right now im satisfied that its working OK(this will probably change in the future when i want to install new gbpvr features). Ofcause I will have to take extra care in securing my winxp box ... but think its sufficient to make sure that my "multi media server" only go outside my local firewall for epg updates!

Problems with my graphic driver (probably a hardware issue with my mob) got me sidetracked ... thought that problems with my mob could be the cause of the chobby playback however that seems to be a totally wrong conclusion. My problems with not being able to install a working display driver on my system had nothing to do with the "chobby playback" (via mvp) what so ever, which was also suggested by wtg earlyer in this thread. So problem seems to be solved ... thks for the help :-)