Catastrophic crashes (1 Viewer)

dan_aka_jack

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October 21, 2005
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London, UK
TV-Server Version: TVEngine3 Snapshot 08-10-2007 01-22h Revision 15494
MediaPortal Version: MediaPortal SVN-Snapshot: 08-10-2007 00-59h - Revision:15494
MediaPortal Skin: default
Windows Version: WinXP SP2 (32-bit) with all latest Windows Updates
CPU Type: AMD X2 AM2
HDD: 300GB Seagate
Memory: 1GB DDR2 (dual channel)
Motherboard: BioStar TA690G AM2
Motherboard Chipset: AMD/ATI 690G integrated chipset
Motherboard Bios: latest
Video Card: NA
Video Card Driver: Catalyst 7.7 (latest)
Sound Card: Realtek HD (integrated onto mobo)
Sound Card AC3:
Sound Card Driver:
1. TV Card: Terratec 2400
1. TV Card Type: dual DVB-T
1. TV Card Driver: latest
MPEG2 Video Codec: MPV
MPEG2 Audio Codec: MPA
Satelite/CableTV Provider: freeview (UK DVB-T)
HTPC Case: Antec
Cooling: standard (keeps everything very cool - those new Athlon X2 chips run cool)
Power Supply:
Remote: MCE
TV: SD CRT fed
TV - HTPC Connection: composite video
DB: MySQL 5.0.45

Over the past week, I have had to install WinXP 3 times on my HTPC. The first two times I installed XP, my HTPC crashed so badly that it corrupted WinXP. Both of these "catastrophic" crashes happened when the HTPC awoke from S3 standby (with MP running). After waking up, the system seemed normal for a second and then completely froze. The system stopped responding to the keyboard so I tried logging in via Remote Desktop but the HTPC wouldn't even respond to pings. I did a hard reset. When the system booted, WinXP took about 5 minutes to load and then was unusable (really, REALLY sluggish). So I formatted the HD and re-installed XP and MP.

I'm now running the latest SVN version of MP without TV-Server and the system seems healthy so far (and I've tried a few waking-from-standby tests).

I'm afraid I don't have any logs because the system wasn't healthy enough to retrieve the logs after the crashes! I'm sorry this bug report is so vague - I expect it's fairly useless to the devs but I wanted to flag up this issue anyway. I'm 90% certain the problem was caused by TV-Server (or maybe the TV-Server client plug-in). As far as I can tell, this isn't a hardware issue (i.e. the CPU never gets above about 30 degrees C and the computer is 100% stable when not running MP). I wonder if anyone else has experienced this problem?

MP (without TV-Server) seems to be working for me and I'm loving it - thanks so much for all the time and effort you've all been putting into the project. I'm sorry this bug report is so unpleasant!

Thanks,
Jack
 

THDBASED

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January 30, 2006
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I think you need to find the problem somewhere else. I mean there are a lot of users using the TVserver and anyone is having these problems so I think you should look somewhere else or give the devs some logs to look at...
 

dan_aka_jack

Portal Member
October 21, 2005
28
0
London, UK
Yeah, you're right.

Urg. It's a far-from-perfect "diagnosis situation". It's a new PC so I haven't been using it for long enough to be SURE that the hardware isn't to blame. There's a very slight possibility that the hard disk might be dodgy (this is a total hunch - there are no SMART errors).

Like many people here, I've built quite a few PCs over the years (for friends etc) and I've never, EVER seen WinXP crash so badly that it corrupts itself. I guess this "catastrophic" crash suggests the hardware might be to blame.

So, I guess the bottom line is this: the devs probably shouldn't worry about this issue (unless other people are experiencing a similar problem) because there's too little evidence to go on and my claim that TV-Server is to blame is spurious. If the crash happens again then I'll do my best to retrieve logs.
 

dan_aka_jack

Portal Member
October 21, 2005
28
0
London, UK
Ah, great - thanks. I'll install the update now.

The "catastrophic crash" happened again last night. This means that the crash is DEFINITELY NOT caused by TV-Server or MySQL because I don't have either installed on my machine at the moment.

I'll install the update that THDBASED kindly pointed me to. If the problem persists then I'll come back to the forum! In the mean time - and just for the sake of completeness - I've attached my logs. The crash happened at 2007-08-14 20:37:35

Many thanks,
Jack
 

Paranoid Delusion

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  • June 13, 2005
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    Jack

    Try changing to hibernate instead of standby, the reasoning for this is to put the emphasis back on the hard disk just to see if it is possibly faulty, if no problems maybe a faulty memory module using S3 standby dumping crap back onto the disk.

    Regards
     

    dan_aka_jack

    Portal Member
    October 21, 2005
    28
    0
    London, UK
    Hi PD,

    Thanks for the reply. Good idea, I'll try hibernate (can MediaPortal automatically wake the system from hibernate?)

    That reminds me - I should run some RAM stress-tests to see if the RAM is dodgy.

    I did some more tinkering this morning to try to learn more about why the system runs so slowly after last night's "catastrophic crash". I had a hunch that the hard disk was running too slowly so I ran HDtach and it reported that the HD was only delivering 2MBytes/second (very slow - it should be 50MB/sec). So I downloaded and ran the Seagate diagnostics tool "SeaTools". It found no errors.

    So then I went into Hardware Manager and un-installed all my ATA and SATA drivers. After rebooting the system, Windows re-installed the ATA and SATA drivers and everything started working properly again! So - the good news is that I now know how to fix the computer when the "catastrophic crash" happens. The bad news is that I still don't know what causes the catastrophic crash. I'll stress-test my computer this afternoon.

    Thanks,
    Jack
     

    Paranoid Delusion

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    Check system clock and see if motherboard battery keeping settings when powered down.

    Any specific drivers that may have been included with the motherboard (on cd) for Hard disks, ie Nvidia, try forcing windows to use those (not Vista).

    MP will happily use hibernate, and this also has the bonus of overcoming some usb problems, but is not the ideal long term on\off solution, but for testing purposes its fine.
     

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