This is a difficult one - there are clear PC reasons such as crash or power cut that have to be ruled out and yet as the example pointed out in my first post there is an aparent randomess when it does fail, and sure enough those are the progs we want to watch
My freeview set top box has recently failed and been replaced. Its possible it was leaking to the scart loop as the tv picture seems much better now, and I guess its possible this could have produced mvp signals that might have killed recordings. Been having near 100% success with recordings recently :-)
Thought I'd add an update in case anyone else has similar problems to me!
I have solved the problem where the MVP keeps asking me what language I want to use (sort of )
I installed the latest Hauppauge software, coppied the new dongle from GBPVR 98.08 into the binary area in the Hauppauge tree. Stop the GBPVR service, started the Hauppauge ones and restarted the MVP.
It now asked me what language to use, noted that there was a CRC check failure and then sucessfully upadated the firmware on the MVP.
It now does not ask what language to use when the MVP is booted when using the new dongle with the Hauppauge software.
Going back to GBPVR...
I can now use a whole load of older dongles sucessfully with GBPVR that I could not before, I can use the one which can on my original MVP CD and the latest one from the Hauppauge web site as well as the 24023b that I was using before.
Unfortunately, the dongle which does not work is the new one from GBPVR 98.08! When I set GBPVR to use this, the MVP gets to 'Loading Application' and then reboots.
In the GBPVR log files, it has lots of lines saying that it is uploading blocks to the MVP and just before the reboot, it says 'no acknowlegement for block nn'.