Scanning channels crashes my server (1 Viewer)

[jasonmcl]

Hi folks,

I've just got some new hardware to replace my creaky old server and I'm busy trying to get it all set up again..

I've got my TV card installed and MediaPortal running. Anything I do in MediaPortal it handles fine, except when I scan for channels my server crashes. It gets as far as displaying the first frequency in the status and suddenly everything goes offline and I have to force an unclean power cycle on my server to get it up and running again.

Everything was working perfectly on the old server (before it died), I was using the same TV card, same Media Portal installation, same server OS, etc. Or at least I can't recall doing anything different when I set all this up on the old one.

Anyone come across this before, or can point me in the right direction of how to fix it?

Many thanks in advance.

 

[mm1352000]

Hello and welcome jasonmcl

What brand and model of TV card is it?
Did you install the drivers from the CD (or manufacturer's website), or are you using Windows/Microsoft standard drivers?
What are the specifications of your old and new server?

mm

 

[jasonmcl]

Hi,

The card is a Hauppauge WinTV Nova-DT Dual DVB-T tuner, or at leas that's what the driver is telling me. The card says it's a Nova-T 500. I got the drivers from Hauppauge's support site after inputting the 5 digit number off of the card to find what I can only assume is the right one.

Old server is Intel D975XBX2 Core i5, 4GB RAM, ATI Radeon X1650 Pro

New server is Intel DP55WB (WBIBX10J) running a newer Core i5 proc, 8GB RAM, ATI Radeon HD 4670. I don't know if it makes a difference or not but the new server has an SSD for the system drive (Intel SSD320 160GB) whereas the old one just ran from spinning disks.

Both systems ran/are running Server 2008 R2.

Thanks!

 

[mm1352000]

I don't know if it makes a difference or not but the new server has an SSD for the system drive (Intel SSD320 160GB) whereas the old one just ran from spinning disks.

Makes no difference for a tuner.

The card is a Hauppauge WinTV Nova-DT Dual DVB-T tuner, or at leas that's what the driver is telling me. The card says it's a Nova-T 500.

A NOVA-T 500 is very different to a NOVA-DT 500. If the card says it is a NOVA-T 500 but you've installed a NOVA-TD 500 driver... that could certainly cause the crash. In fact, to be clear: a driver problem is pretty much the only thing that could cause a crash like you've described.

I suggest you go here:
http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/site/support/index.html

...then select the "legacy products" tab, and find the correct tuner, and the correct drivers for that tuner.
You may need to use hcwclear to clean off the old drivers.

mm

 

[jasonmcl]

So the first time I installed the drivers yesterday (on the new server), it was from the legacy Nova-T 500 installer but it wouldn't work then either. I have tried some other thing since then though, so I'll download a fresh copy and give it another go.

What's interesting here is that the page I went to today had a field to enter the 5 digit model number from a TV card and then the site would take you (in theory) to the correct installer download page. Inputting the number from my card (99101) resulted in the driver I mentioned above.

I'm just installing a few updates on the server now, so I'll give this fresh installer a try once that's done and report back.

Thanks![DOUBLEPOST=1403056321][/DOUBLEPOST]No luck there I'm afraid, it's still crashing

Also even with the legacy drivers installed using the download as stated to be for the Nova-T 500, it still reports in device manager and MediaPortal as Nova-DT Dual DVB-T

 

[mm1352000]

Okay.
Does the tuner work in any other software?

 

[jasonmcl]

Seems to work fine in other software. I installed the Wintv7 software and scanned the channels with that, it worked first time without so much as a performance blip.

 

[mm1352000]

Please try the DVB-T network provider instead of the generic (preferred network provider):
http://wiki.team-mediaportal.com/1_...nfiguration/02_TV_Servers#Edit_Tuner_Settings

The only other suggestion I could offer would be to try older drivers. Beyond that I'm not sure what more to suggest.
I don't recall seeing any reports of issues with these tuners (DT or plain T) in the past.
Technically you're running on an unsupported [for MediaPortal] OS. Yes, the tuner works in other software; yes, it also worked with server 2008 for you in the past; however there are limits to our capacity to assist. If you could reproduce the problem on W7 or 8 then I could try to raise the problem with my contacts at Hauppauge. Otherwise I'm sorry there's nothing more I can do.

 

[jasonmcl]

Yup, I understand the OS is unsupported but I don't really have an alternative. I need the server to do some other things and it needs to be a server OS for that. I honestly wasn't expecting full support or anything, just hoping someone might be able to suggest something I've missed...

UPDATE:

I borrowed a Windows 7 installer from work and rebuilt the machine with that to check if the card was working OK, I wondered if maybe it got damaged when I removed it from the old system and/or put it in the new one. I was able to do a channel scan on that and it didn't crash. I've since rebuilt back to the server OS so I'm all licensed and legal, and with some careful setup I can now scan without the system crashing - consistently too - but it's not finding any channels.

I'll try some other drivers and see if that makes any difference, otherwise I'll just soldier on and hopefully I'll suddenly remember something I did with the old server that I haven't done with the new one yet (although nothing comes to mind..). Either that or I'll give up, installed a desktop OS and work around my other needs.

Thanks for your help