PC Crash

[rawk]

Hi there, before I start off on a wild goose chase, I thought I'd ask if anyone had had this problem before:

I have WinXP SP1, Duron 1800, 512MB RAM, Hauppage 350.

I have set up gb-pvr to view my cable channel, which it is capturing via composite signal through svideo cable.

I am watching the output through the dedicated output on the 350 card, on my TV.

After watching live tv for a short while (say 30 seconds), my PC locks up completely. (mouse doesn't even move).

It *could* be coincidence that I tried to use the Hauppauge remote at this time (twice it has crashed like this), this seemed to be what crashed it (I tried the change channel buttons).

I have to power down the PC & reboot. It wouldn't reboot cleanly until I rebooted a few times!

Its a pretty fresh PC build with XP recently installed. I *did* have WinDVD installed, but uninstalled WinDVD and then reinstalled the Hauppauge software/drivers as it suggests on their site, to avoid codec conficts.

Any ideas?

[crashmeplease]

Hi, hmm I have a similar setup, and too experience lockups from time to time. Sometimes its fine for hours on end, others it will lock up every 10 mins or so, and I have to do a hard power off.

But its always during channel changing. I too use the Hauppauge remote, but ive experienced it locking up while its changing channel itself to record as well.

I dont have any dvd software installed.

Hope this helps.

[rawk]

I've been reading up on this problem and it seems a common one with the 350 when using the tv-out on it and the OSD overlay stuff that shows on top.

A lot of people seem to be blaming it on intel motherboard chipsets (but I have AMD Duron with SiS m/b chipset), I'd guess its more likely to be the hauppauge drivers themselves that are not very good.

Lots of people seem to suggest turning off the OSD and that should solve it, I'll try that tommorow and report back.

[rawk]

Well, I seem to have it sorted - reading up on this I found there were 3 main possibilities.

1. Via chipset/intel motherboard.
2. overheating.
3. shared IRQ interrupt.

Firstly I updated my motherboards bios to the latest version - no difference, still crashed a lot.

I can discount 1 as I don't have this set up.

Can't really say if 2 applies to me, the 350 definately gets pretty hot, but if it really does overheat then i'd just send it back. (people seem to be investing in additional cooling for the card.....are they nuts? Send it back and get something designed properly!

So I had a go at 3. My 350 was running on IRQ 10 along with my audio and usb hardware.

Swapping the cards around a bit inside left me with the 350
sharing IRQ 11 with my main graphics card.

I retested - same problem.

Swapped around again, by putting the 350 into the 2nd from last PCI slot, I managed to get it on its own IRQ, 5.

So far (12 hrs) I have had no crashes at all, everything appears to be fine, even using 350s TV-OUT with OSD on.

I don't believe I had to do this to get it working!! Its like going back 6-7 years in technology!

But I'm glad its working, and it does produce very good output.

A big Grrrrrr to Hauppauge for shoddy drivers.

[sub]

Well done - glad to hear you got it working.

[Guest]

Ive noticed a problem with GB-PVR... which locks up the software...

In order to watch LIVE TV you have to have the recorder running...

This creates an infinitely growing mpg file on you HD...

When it gets large enough... the software will crash.

[sub]

Yes, you have to have the recording service running in the background. Thats the way its designed. The Recording Service as a central point that controls all access to the capture devices.

The next version introduces a ring buffer file that never grows beyond a configureable limit (1GB by default), meaning no more endlessly growing files. This 1GB buffer will provide a reasonable timeshift buffer for most users.