Recorder:Pid 7c0 Continuity error... 3 ( prev f ) - bad signal? (5 Viewers)

[mm1352000]

When something is recording though, I can still see some stuttering while I am watching something else (the nature of the stutter has changed too, hard to explain but it is different from before).

Well first thing to check is whether the symptoms are the same using the same test as I suggested previously.

What other drivers should I try to replace? Any other suggestions in general?

I have no idea what motherboard and peripheral devices you are running so I have no ability to make suggestions here. I did ask for this information in my previous post...

 

[tachtevrenidis]

thanks.

My earlier post contains the logs and along with that dxdiag.txt which lists out all my hardware. As I mentioned before, this is a Lenovo T420 laptop so if you ask me what type of MB it has, I would say Intel? (or custom Lenovo).

One thing that is strange is that whether I plug the laptop to my gigabit switch (which is then plugged into my gigabit router) or directly to my gigabit router the negotiated speed is always 100Mbps. The built in ethernet is gigabit though. I am not sure why that is the case, I am planning on investigating tomorrow.[DOUBLEPOST=1378186762][/DOUBLEPOST]ok too much suspense to wait until tomorrow. There must be something wrong with the wiring in my house (the house has built in ethernet wiring running throughout). When I connect the laptop to the ethernet outlet in the kitchen it auto negs 1Gbps. The outlet right next to my TV does not do that. I will need to borrow network equipment to test for interference etc. Although I would like to get to the bottom of this, I doubt this is the problem since I was using MCE for 5 whole years recording HD streams (same hd homerun device) without any issues. Good to know though...

 

[mm1352000]

...this is a Lenovo T420 laptop...

Nothing else connected to it?
There are a bunch of devices like the wireless network adapter, fingerprint sensor, bluetooth and camera that I'd disable if you don't need them. Wireless network adaptors are infamous for bad DPC latency so I'd start with that, followed by the chipset (Intel) drivers... but as far as I'm aware it is a case of trial and error.

One thing that is strange is that whether I plug the laptop to my gigabit switch (which is then plugged into my gigabit router) or directly to my gigabit router the negotiated speed is always 100Mbps. The built in ethernet is gigabit though. I am not sure why that is the case, I am planning on investigating tomorrow.

Could it be that the cable is not CAT 5+?

 

[tachtevrenidis]

wireless adapter is disabled. So are the fingerprint scanner and the internal web cam (there is also an external lifecam webcam that is not disabled). There is also a self powered USB2 drive attached to the laptop as well as a self-power eSATA driver plugged in.

As far as the CAT 5+ comment, I don't think the type of cable is the issue (I don't see the contractor who wired my house when it was being built using different types of cable for different ports throughout the house). I think there might be interference though. Won't know until I test. But again, I think this is mostly a nice to have not a must have. 2 HD streams should be handled fine by 100Mbps full duplex (it was fine when I was using MCE).

 

[tachtevrenidis]

ok network problem fixed (got a long cord and ran it from my laptop directly to my router. Laptop now shows 1Gbps connection. As speculated though, that does not seem to be anything. Did a BIOS update too, just in case. Still the same. I am starting to lose hope...

 

[mm1352000]

Well first thing to check is whether the symptoms are the same using the same test as I suggested previously.

 

[tachtevrenidis]

ok LOTS of info. I spent a couple of hours tonight analyzing the latency patterns. When two shows are recording the latency is on average every 10 seconds. I used xperf and latencymon to tie this back to drivers. It all linked back to ndis.sys (part of the network driver). I made sure I had the latest network driver and also went into the BIOS and disabled pretty much everything except for the network, esata and usb. The issue persisted.

Then I started googling. The driver is intel 82579LM and it seemed like there was a lot of chatter relating to this piece of hardware and latency. This post seemed to get it right:

http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/W-Serie...-for-X-T-and-W-0-series-Intel-NIC/td-p/611567

After changing these settings, the problem seems to be fixed. I don't want to jinx it but I have watched a show while recording two others for 10 minutes now without a single hiccup. I will keep monitoring. When I ran latencymon, the worse it ever got was yellow (which is not enough to trigger a discontinuity in tv service).

I want to thank everyone your help. I learned a lot about MePo through this.

 

[mm1352000]

Fantastic news - that's great.
...and thank you for reporting back. I'm sure the info will assist other people reading this thread in the future.

 

[tachtevrenidis]

It is important to note, and I suspect this more often the case than not, that MePo had nothing to do with the issue here. It was a OS/driver problem.

 

[DragonQ]

I'd like to hijack this thread somewhat since I also get continuity errors with a seemingly perfect signal. My specs are below:

Windows Server 2012
MSI H77MA-G43
Intel Celeron G1620
4 GiB RAM
OCZ Vertex 4 SSD
9x HDDs
Startech PEXSAT32
Startech PEXSATA22I
Blackgold BGT3600 (8.1.1.2 driver)


I'm pretty sure everything unnecessary is already disabled in the BIOS (audio, parallel port, serial port). I plan to try an upgrade to the 9.1.0.0 driver for the tuner card this afternoon, however, it may not work because the 9.0.0.2 Beta driver broke MediaPortal compatibility ("unknown error" when tuning to DVB-S) and I don't know if this has been fixed. If it works that'd be great since it's meant to have improvements for Windows 8.

The other thing I've done is check DPC latency. It looks like there are two big culprits - one is the NT kernel (not much I can do about that) and the other is scsiport.sys. Now, all 4 of the HDDs I have connected to the Startech cards show as "SCSI disk device" in Device Manager, but the two cards use different controllers. The newer PEXSAT32 uses Marvell 9128 and the older PEXSATA22I uses JMicron JMB366. JMicron is notoriously rubbish and a bit of googling reveals some other people with latency issues due to JMB36x controllers. I'm running the only Windows 8 compatible driver for it, so can't do much there.

My plan is to disable the older Startech card and see if the latency issues persist. None of my MediaPortal related drives are using it (e.g. recording HDD) but maybe it's still being accessed periodically for some reason. If it does turn out to be the problem then I'll swap it out for a newer Marvell model. If not, I'm not sure where to go next. :/