Play Program → Standby → Resume → Crash

[Rene_1]

Hi Together,

My GBPVR-version:
1.4.7

My hardware:
OS: Win XP Pro SP3
Capture Card: Terratec Cinergy 1200 DVB-C (BDA drivers 4.8.3.18)
Graphic card: Asus GeForce EN6200LE TC512 TD 256MB
Mainboard: Asus P5Q3
Hard Drives: Several Samsung drives (one 2.5, rest 3.5)

My situation:
I use GBPVR on my server for recording only. I then use the web interface to access GBPVR and to play the recordings on my clients. My server is configured in a way that it should go into standby after 15 minutes.

My problem:
When I hit the “Play Program” button on the “Manage Recordings” tab on the web interface the selected recording starts to play. So far so good. But exactly after 15 minutes my server goes into standby, resumes immediately and then crashes immediately.

All I see is a black screen and the server is completely dead. All I can do is to hit the power button for longer than 5 seconds to power off the machine.

There is no error message in the logs (see attached zip file). There is no error message in the event viewer of windows.

Same problem on (mostly) different machine:
I have had the same problem with another machine. I used this one in the same way as described above. Its hardware configuration was:
OS: Win XP Home SP3
Capture Card: Terratec Cinergy 1200 DVB-C (BDA drivers 4.8.3.18) – same as above
Graphic card: Onboard graphic
Mainboard: Aopen i915Ga-hfs
Hard Drives: Maxtor and Several Samsung drives

AND:
Besides that, the server crashes randomly with the same symptoms. It goes into standby, resumes immediately and crashes immediately. I then have a black screen as well and the machine is completely death. Again no error messages in the logs or Windows event viewer. The same happened with the old server too.

My suggestions:
So maybe this has nothing to do with GBPVR but since both machines are/were dedicated to GBPVR and have completely different hardware components I predict that GBPVR causes the problems. Also I can not find threads in the forum from users having problem with the capture card I use.

Any help is really appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Rene

P.S.: Sorry for my bad English.

[pBS]

it's probably a winblows problem...can you try suspending without running anything?
fresh boot, close any extra progs., then suspend..[or let it suspend]

if that doesn't work, it's probably windows..if it does, then it's something running that isn't letting machine go into standby, then error msg comes up like a little yellow triangle in tray..

i get this when i have my browser window open...
[not sure why, FFox latest isn't liking suspend, probably a page i have open]
if it suspends fine when you haven't played a file then it's probably video drivers..
oh, the play is on remote client..n/m...can you watch server screen when you try playback? maybe antivirus/firewall/net security prob..
[or some dialog coming up]

look in win event logs for reasons for the denial of suspend..usually in system log..
MCE Standby Tool may be of help diagnosing...

[Rene_1]

Hey pBS,

thank you for your help.

it's probably a winblows problem...can you try suspending without running anything?
fresh boot, close any extra progs., then suspend..[or let it suspend]

This works perfect.

if that doesn't work, it's probably windows..if it does, then it's something running that isn't letting machine go into standby, then error msg comes up like a little yellow triangle in tray..

Unfortunately no triangle either.

i get this when i have my browser window open...
[not sure why, FFox latest isn't liking suspend, probably a page i have open]
if it suspends fine when you haven't played a file then it's probably video drivers..
oh, the play is on remote client..n/m...can you watch server screen when you try playback? maybe antivirus/firewall/net security prob..
[or some dialog coming up]

look in win event logs for reasons for the denial of suspend..usually in system log..

As mentioned there is no entry in the event log which might point to a potential failure.

MCE Standby Tool may be of help diagnosing...

Does this tool work under Windows XP? If yes, I will give it a try.

I am asking myself why Windows does not recognize that a client is streaming a program?

[pBS]

there's a program called Toff you can use instead of window's standby...
it allows you to tweak based upon network activity so won't suspend if network activity is above what you specify..[client should be easy, lots of activity]
lots more control than windows own timers..
network access typically doesn't use much cpu so clients aren't using enough to trigger windows timers..

both work on xp..

oh and turn off windows' own timers by setting 'never' for suspend timeouts when using toff..

[martint123]

I am asking myself why Windows does not recognize that a client is streaming a program?

I can be logged remotely into my server with VNC doing a disc intensive task like defrag and Windows will still put the thing to sleep after my 10 minutes. I have to manually set it to always on for remote work. ISTR it is only local keyboard and mouse that keeps the server awake normally.

If it is going to sleep when streaming via the web interface I would have to ask if the recording service is sending Windows keepalive messages (or whatever they are called) it does this when recording and sending to PC and MVP/NMT clients without a problem - a question for sub in this case?

[Rene_1]

@martint123

Thanks for sharing your experience. I thought standby will not be activated if the machine has a certain amount of work load. But now I know better and I will test the programs pBS suggested. Maybe sub will find some time to post whether “keepalive messages” are sent.

@pBS
Thanks for your tips. I will give both programs a try. Might probably take some time till I found out if one of them solved my problems. I will post my results here as soon as possible.

In the meanwhile further suggestions, tips, trick, etc. are more than welcome.

Regards

[Sykor]

@martint123

Thanks for sharing your experience. I thought standby will not be activated if the machine has a certain amount of work load. But now I know better and I will test the programs pBS suggested. Maybe sub will find some time to post whether “keepalive messages” are sent.

I may be wrong, but when you hit "Play Program", the EWA offloads the streaming task to (usually) VLC. gbpvr itself (either prvx2 or the recording service), is just idling, with no reason at all to send a "keepalive" messages.
Only VLC could/just send the keepalive since he is the only one doing anything.
pBS' advice about Toff is probaly your best bet. Since it adds the ability to monitor network traffic (which windows does not), it should solve your mid-viewing hibernations.

[sub]

I may be wrong, but when you hit "Play Program", the EWA offloads the streaming task to (usually) VLC. gbpvr itself (either prvx2 or the recording service), is just idling, with no reason at all to send a "keepalive" messages.

Thats correct. GB-PVR has no idea its even happening. UJB might be able to add something in EWA though.

[martint123]

Thats correct. GB-PVR has no idea its even happening.

My apologies, I thought with it being "built-in" with config settings and the like it was part of the GBPVR core. Sorry.

[Rene_1]

Back again (as promised).

First let me thank you all for your help and I wish you all a Happy New Year.

The last couple of days I tested both tools. Unfortunately non of them solved my issues completely.

The MCE Standby Tool was a complete fail. It caused more crashes than I had before. To be honest my machine crashed nearly every time when it attempted to go to sleep.

With TOFF I had much better results. It puts my server in standby and awakes it without any problems. So far so good. Unfortunately TOFF works very well even when a recording is in progress. The CPU usage during recording is as equal as when the machine is in idle mode. So I can not use TOFF's CPU usage mode.

To make a long story short I had some time over New Year and wrote a small program. I use it in combination with TOFF. And it goes like this:

• I use TOFF in network mode (timeout = 15 minutes).
  
• To prevent TOFF from pulling the trigger when a recording is in progress my program takes a look in GBPVR's database (gbprvr.db3) randomly (every 10 minutes).
  
• If the present time is between a scheduled recording it produces some network traffic.
  
• The network traffic “disarms” TOFF.
  

As my server does some other stuff during the day (mostly backup tasks) I can specify additional timeslots (via a file) to prevent TOFF from shutting down at these times.

Of course it is not very well tested by now as it is up running for only one day now. But things are looking not that bad. If someone is interested in contact me. As Java is my program language of choice it is written in Java.

And just to make things sure my next step will be to buy another capture card. I am thinking of buying a Hauppauge WinTV HVR 930c. As the capture card is, besides the power supply, the only device which is not new I will give it a try.

Regards