Apologies in advance if this isn't the right place for this question...
I've been getting some weird behaviour from my HTPC recently. This came to a head this weekend as I finally laid an ethernet cable across the house to hardwire my internet connection. At one point I accidentally cut the power supply while the PC was on, and on reboot this seemed to have messed up MediaPortal. I've done this before, so did a fresh re-install of MP which worked fine. I turned the TV on as a test which also worked - until after about ten minutes when live TV froze making a horrid noise, and again MP was fried. This started a never-ending cycle of Windows 10 rebooting every 2 minutes, sometime with a blue-screen error messages, sometimes without, sometimes just becoming unresponsive. Eventually it seemed that unplugging the wifi dongle fixed the constant rebooting, and I could get back to work.
Back to work on the ethernet connection. At first, the onboard LAN port (nVidia, on the motherboard) wasn't recognised by windows. I've never used this port so figured it wasn't configured somehow. After playing with it (nothing worked), it suddenly became active when I unplugged the wifi dongle. A couple of reboots later, though, it failed to be recognised by the windows device manager. So, I installed a PCi ethernet card I had lying around, which worked first time. Success, I have a LAN connection now.
Or so I thought. Back to the MP reinstall, the TV server connection failed on reinstall, and ignoring this, I used BackupSettings to reinstall my settings. I noticed here that all TV channels were not being mapped, so stopped the backup and checked the TV card - it fails to be recognised in device manager! I checked the card was properly seated (it was), rebooted a few times, eventually removed it completely and rebooted, nothing worked - windows doesn't find the card.
In the course of all this work, I've tried and/or noticed the following:
1. Completely cutting power and removing the CMOS battery to force a completely fresh reboot. Didn't change anything for the TV card, but the onboard LAN was recognised - this then disappeared after a few reboots. Sometimes the onboard LAN is recognised, sometimes it isn't.
2. Removing all PCi cards (graphics, TV, LAN) and rebooting. Nothing changes - LAN and graphics are recognised, TV isn't.
3. It's possible the TV card is fried. As it is new (Digital Devices S2) it's unlikely. I can check this when I can get my hands on a spare PC somewhere.
4. Ran Windows troubleshooter. It said some new hardware was recognised, but I can't see it.
5. The PC is emitting a high pitched noise. It's hard to hear exactly where it's from, but when removing the PCi cards, the noise is still there (so it's not the cards). This makes me assume it's the motherboard. On close inspection, with the cover off, it actually sounds like a (very quiet) alarm. It stops after a while (5 mins?).
6. A few weeks ago I tried to install a new wifi card which failed. I assumed this was a driver issue with Win10 although with hindsight, it was recognised and did work once, but after rebooting failed to function properly.
So, in summary, I have a PC which doesn't consistently recognise a number of peripheries (onboard LAN, TV card). Is my motherboard on the way out? Anything else I can do to 'force' windows to recognise the TV card?
It's an ASUS P5N-EM HDMI motherboard.
I've been getting some weird behaviour from my HTPC recently. This came to a head this weekend as I finally laid an ethernet cable across the house to hardwire my internet connection. At one point I accidentally cut the power supply while the PC was on, and on reboot this seemed to have messed up MediaPortal. I've done this before, so did a fresh re-install of MP which worked fine. I turned the TV on as a test which also worked - until after about ten minutes when live TV froze making a horrid noise, and again MP was fried. This started a never-ending cycle of Windows 10 rebooting every 2 minutes, sometime with a blue-screen error messages, sometimes without, sometimes just becoming unresponsive. Eventually it seemed that unplugging the wifi dongle fixed the constant rebooting, and I could get back to work.
Back to work on the ethernet connection. At first, the onboard LAN port (nVidia, on the motherboard) wasn't recognised by windows. I've never used this port so figured it wasn't configured somehow. After playing with it (nothing worked), it suddenly became active when I unplugged the wifi dongle. A couple of reboots later, though, it failed to be recognised by the windows device manager. So, I installed a PCi ethernet card I had lying around, which worked first time. Success, I have a LAN connection now.
Or so I thought. Back to the MP reinstall, the TV server connection failed on reinstall, and ignoring this, I used BackupSettings to reinstall my settings. I noticed here that all TV channels were not being mapped, so stopped the backup and checked the TV card - it fails to be recognised in device manager! I checked the card was properly seated (it was), rebooted a few times, eventually removed it completely and rebooted, nothing worked - windows doesn't find the card.
In the course of all this work, I've tried and/or noticed the following:
1. Completely cutting power and removing the CMOS battery to force a completely fresh reboot. Didn't change anything for the TV card, but the onboard LAN was recognised - this then disappeared after a few reboots. Sometimes the onboard LAN is recognised, sometimes it isn't.
2. Removing all PCi cards (graphics, TV, LAN) and rebooting. Nothing changes - LAN and graphics are recognised, TV isn't.
3. It's possible the TV card is fried. As it is new (Digital Devices S2) it's unlikely. I can check this when I can get my hands on a spare PC somewhere.
4. Ran Windows troubleshooter. It said some new hardware was recognised, but I can't see it.
5. The PC is emitting a high pitched noise. It's hard to hear exactly where it's from, but when removing the PCi cards, the noise is still there (so it's not the cards). This makes me assume it's the motherboard. On close inspection, with the cover off, it actually sounds like a (very quiet) alarm. It stops after a while (5 mins?).
6. A few weeks ago I tried to install a new wifi card which failed. I assumed this was a driver issue with Win10 although with hindsight, it was recognised and did work once, but after rebooting failed to function properly.
So, in summary, I have a PC which doesn't consistently recognise a number of peripheries (onboard LAN, TV card). Is my motherboard on the way out? Anything else I can do to 'force' windows to recognise the TV card?
It's an ASUS P5N-EM HDMI motherboard.