PC shutting down after recording. won't wake/reboot without power disconnect

[SnakeEyes]

I know this sounds more like a hardware issue than NPVR, but it didn't start until updating NPVR about a month ago.

Over the past month or so my HTPC has been dead in the water when I get up in the morning. I have it setup for standard "sleep" mode (no hibernation or hybrid) after an hour of inactivity. It has a blue LED that flashes while sleeping. I noticed that the LED was off. I tried "waking" with my keyboard/mouse and nothing. When I manually push the power button the PC appears to reboot but fails with a solid red "DRAM" LED on the motherboard. I then have to either unplug or switch off the PSU for a second. After that, it boots and operates normally. No error messages or anything. I ran the Windows Mem Checker and it found no RAM problems. This has been happening for several weeks now. I have been trying to monitor for the cause. It went an entire week without issue. I also just happened to not have any scheduled recordings that week. Then I noticed that it was DOA the next morning after a recording the previous night. I haven't made any hardware changes in over a year. I'm not 100%, but it seems this started happening around the time I updated NPVR to the version prior to the most recent. I updated to the most recent version and still have the same problem.

Any ideas, help, or suggestions?

TIA

i7920
Asus Sabertooth mobo
12gb ram (3 sticks triple channel)
GTX 660 Ti
Win 10 Pro
all drivers and software up to date

[jcole998]

I've experienced this behavior with my HP laptop. Rarely, thank goodness! Upon opening the lid while in sleep mode, certain lights turn on, the fan runs but no display and then after about a minute, only two LEDs are left on and both are blinking. Research explained that this blink code indicates that the CPU was not running. No further reason was given. Anyway, the only cure that worked for me was to remove the battery and AC adapter, then hold down the power button for 30 seconds. Release the power button, plug in the AC adapter but not the battery and then press the power button. Bootup was normal. It has worked each time.

I submit this narrative to simply suggest that a CPU can "fail to start" from sleep mode.

Perhaps a little more research into the motherboard's operation is warranted.

Good luck!

[SnakeEyes]

Thanks for the reply. The motherboard has several LED's that light up green or red. The LED for the CPU passes and is green. The fans and everything start as normal. The light beside the ram "DRAM" stays solid red indicating a memory error. There is no image output. I'm currently tracking the issue. So far this week it has happened one time (Wed night after recording 2 shows). Both shows recorded correctly and are watchable. At some point after the recordings the problem occurred as the next morning the PC was shutdown and locked up. I have never seen the problem occur while using the PC. I had it on most of the day and evenings Saturday and Sunday without issue. Throughout the day I can "wake" it on command, use it, and then it goes back to "sleep" without issue. The problem only seems to happen at some point after a recording.

To further test, I will setup some random day time recordings and try to monitor.

[Graham]

The problem only seems to happen at some point after a recording.

I would be surprised if that is anything other than a coincidence. My money is on a hardware problem.

I used to get similar symptoms very occasionally ... in my case it was due to a problem with one of my tuners (or its driver) (a Blackgold DVB-T, since you ask) ... About one time in every five, the system would not resume from sleep and would hang with the power light on but would not respond to any input. I would have to disconnect from the mains to get it running.

Does the machine have two sticks of memory ... It might operate well enough with just one so that you could swap between them to see if that eliminates the problem.

[SnakeEyes]

I would be surprised if that is anything other than a coincidence. My money is on a hardware problem.

I used to get similar symptoms very occasionally ... in my case it was due to a problem with one of my tuners (or its driver) (a Blackgold DVB-T, since you ask) ... About one time in every five, the system would not resume from sleep and would hang with the power light on but would not respond to any input. I would have to disconnect from the mains to get it running.

Does the machine have two sticks of memory ... It might operate well enough with just one so that you could swap between them to see if that eliminates the problem.

i think you are right about the coincidence. i manually recorded two shows yesterday without issue. i watched TV for a couple of hours. the only problem i had was before going to bed i noticed it wasn't "asleep". there were no recordings so it should have been out. i manually put it to sleep. this morning it was fine. i have 3 sticks of ram. i'll probably just start the process of building a new machine. this one was built out of spare parts several years ago just to test NPVR and XBMC. i have been using it daily ever since.

[stustunz]

have you added any hardware lately (new hard drive new tuner )

failing power supply maybe or getting hot causing crash maybe things are working a bit harder with new version of npvr or some other program you have added (memory leak or similar)

[SnakeEyes]

I think I finally found the culprit. I installed "TeamViewer" a few weeks ago and set it up so that I could wake my HTPC from my phone and other PC's. I uninstalled it earlier this week and haven't had a problem since.