Re: Live TV Freezes Media Center

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Hello JW and everyone else

Thanks for the suggestions
Here is another progress update. I hope this is helpful to someone.

I tried the 81.95 shortly after JW suggestion but did not notice any
improvement on my system so soon moved back to the 77.79 NVIDIA video driver,
just to keep things possibly simpler. I also later spoke with the PNY
support and they suggested the later drivers basically (I am not sure which
drivers) only have improvement that support mother boards with the new dual
monitor card abilities. Mine does not. My system at the time seemed to be
fairly stable, usable but did lock up at times. I was not sure what actions
caused the failure as it would run for several hours. The system was now
running much differently than before I changed out the mother board and
associated parts when it was totally unusable and would not respond to any
commands, requiring a hard power down by holding down the start up button
until the system power was cut off. Now the Microsoft Flag key on the board
would pop up the Start menu, it would respond to a “u + u” key input and
begin the shut down process. When the system was working anytime before it
responded slowly to the Microsoft Media Center Remote Control but well enough
to use. I updated all the ECS mother board drivers, noticed no real changes
and updated the last three Windows XP updates with no improvement. When the
system would fail, I got a black screen with the message “No TV Signal There
is Currently no TV signal detected for this channel” + some more error
message verbiage. The remote control or mouse was unable to select another
channel, as if the Media Center software had failed to function and crashed
on both of the installed TV tuners. Eventually I noticed if I turned on the
system and allowed it to run on a single channel, all worked but things
deteriorated and now if you changed the channel with the remote several times
the system would fail and the No TV Signal error message would occur. Using
the mouse only to change channels would also cause the same “No TV Signal”
error message. Using the Microsoft Flag key followed by u+u started the shut
down procedure which would not complete successfully ending with an error
message box saying something about “MSVidCtl” not functioning. Interesting,
the mouse and keyboard was still working but all other functions in Windows
XP were not, requiring a power down and restart. I then changed the NVIDA
video driver from 77.79 to version 66.93 and everything started to work
again. The Microsoft Media Center remote control works much faster than
before but still some what slower than a regular TV set. For a test I then
told Windows to restore the working video driver back to its previous drive
and Media Center failed after changing a couple channels. The 66.93 driver
is back and everything seems to be working better than ever before, at least
for the 2 ½ hours since I went to the 66.93 driver.

I will now continue my testing

Dennis


"JW" wrote:

> You might also try the 81.95 NVIDIA drivers since they support both XP and
> MCE and have MCE fixes that are not contained in the 77.79 drivers. Some
> MCE users of these drivers, however, have reported some flickering and gone
> back to the 77.79 drivers.
> I also had trouble with a 5700LE card hard frezzing and solved it by
> replacing the power supply with a 450 model.
> "Dennis" <Dennis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:61014FFB-45C1-4288-A1A3-F052DEF821CA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >I am back --- I have some success to report but first thanks are in order
> >
> > I have been working with PNY and Hauppauge technical support, both
> > separately, off and on for the last few weeks in my spare moments. I
> > contacted PNY first because the combined news group opinion appeared to be
> > more toward video cards and drivers and then I contacted Hauppauge the
> > tuner
> > card manifacture. The problem does not seem to be with either company at
> > the
> > moment (the probable fix is coming) and I would like to thank both for
> > their
> > quality easy to work with support. Never once did either company try to
> > dodge the question with the old saying "it's not my problem - look over
> > there" as many other companies might have tried or attempted to give you
> > an
> > almost impossible task to do, just to get rid of you for a while. Each
> > manufacture worked diligently with me to clear their product, both
> > offering
> > to send me RMA replacement products and a Hauppauge card is on it way
> > right
> > now but it appears not to be the problem either. I did purchase and try a
> > second different video card, a PNY Verto GeFORCE 6200 128 MB before
> > re-contacting Hauppauge as PNY offered to RMA the first video card just to
> > make sure it was not their card. Again both companies support was just a
> > phone call away, no delayed e-mail messaging like ATI does nor out of the
> > country foreign type support. Just real live, quality, USA support.
> > Support
> > of this quality will definitely guide my next purchase and maybe yours to
> > one
> > of their well supported products.
> >
> > I just purchased a new mother board (ECS ELITEGROUP nFORCE3-A K8HT1600
> > nForce 250), processor (AMD Sempron 2800+ Socket 754), new ram too because
> > the old is not compatible with the new mother board, a new SATA Hard Drive
> > and unpacked a new ($15 after rebate) cheap tower case with 450 watt power
> > supply. One of those tower case deals you can't afford to pass by but
> > probably should have. :) :) I know it's probably not a high quality
> > power
> > supply, I won't forget to try and reuse the original higher quality
> > Enermax
> > power supply if there are problems. I reused the original Hauppauge
> > WinTV-PVR-500 dual tuner card and the origonal PNY Vetro GeFORCE FX 5700
> > VE
> > video card. Loaded Windows XP Media Center software and the ECS set up
> > disk.
> > I updated the PNY video card to Nvidia's version 77.79 driver for Windows
> > XP
> > Media Center. (Note many seem to think the 66.93 version driver is the
> > most
> > stable and I will try it later if there are problems) I then installed
> > the
> > most current Hauppauge tuner driver version 2.0.35.23258 dated 9-15-2005
> > found on their site as file name "mce_cd_29.zip". I installed Nvidia's
> > video
> > encoder "NVIDIA_PureVideo_Decoder_Trial_1.02-185.exe" I did not allow
> > Windows XP Media Center to update at all, thinking I will allow it to
> > update
> > later.
> >
> > Guess what --- it's working OK, well in at about 4 hour segments before
> > failing so far. Live TV has run about 12 hours so far, noting three
> > freezes
> > at about 4 hour intervals but this time their not absolutely hard freezes,
> > a
> > Ctrl-Alt-Del will bring up Windows Task Manager. I am going to start
> > adding
> > the Windows updates and see what happens but at the moment it looks like
> > the
> > ABIT KV7 mother board with its AMD 2600 Athlon XP processor may have been
> > the problem. Even though I did not reuse the old memory I don't think it
> > was
> > the problem because I used two 512 MB chips, one each at a time and both
> > together, all resulting in the same type failure. More testing with the
> > new
> > setup should tell more but I thought if anyone is still monitoring this
> > newsgroup trouble they might like to know what's happening.
> >
> > Thanks for everyone's input and I will publish more as I test further,
> > suggestions are always appreciated.
> >
> > Dennis
> >
> >
> > "Dennis" wrote:
> >
> >> Hello Moose
> >>
> >> Thanks for the input, I have been asleep at the wheel after a few days of
> >> no
> >> additional posts and had not noticed all the activity.
> >>
> >> I just noticed when I went to find your suggested driver, NVIDIA has a
> >> new
> >> Windows Media Center driver dated November 14 2005 (version 81.94) and I
> >> decided to test it first - It worked for over 20 minutes, I was impress
> >> while
> >> I watched but I found the system frozen about 2 hours later when I
> >> returned
> >> to check on its progress. Easily found a 66.81 driver (not the one you
> >> suggested) on the NVIDIA site, tested it and it fails too. Just loaded
> >> your
> >> suggested driver 66.93 as I had a little trouble finding it. Finally had
> >> to
> >> do a search on the NVIDIA site for "66.93 driver" and there it was, I am
> >> not
> >> sure how you find it with out doing a search --- noted for anyone else
> >> looking. The system has frozen once after just a few minutes, restarted
> >> the
> >> system a second time and it froze in about 15 minutes.
> >>
> >>
> >> Again when I find the fix I will post it, even if it's as simple as check
> >> the power cord. :) :)
> >>
> >> Thanks to everyone for the suggestions, they are all appreciated
> >>
> >> Dennis
> >>
> >>
> >> "}Moose" wrote:
> >>
> >> > Hi Dennis,
> >> >
> >> > I have had the same problem with FX5xxx cards and it is the driver. The
> >> > latest Forceware drivers are broken with MCE2005 on these cards. You
> >> > need to
> >> > download the 66.93 drivers which work a treat. You can get them from
> >> > Nvidia's
> >> > driver archive.
> >> >
> >> > Once I installed these drivers I have never had any problems withe
> >> > either a
> >> > 5200 or a 5700 ultra. Hope this works for you.
> >> >
> >> > Rory
> >> >
> >> > PS - sorry about the empty post before!
> >> >
> >> > "Dennis" wrote:
> >> >
> >> > > Windows XP Media Center 2005
> >> > > NVIDA DVD Decoder
> >> > >
> >> > > Hauppauge WinTV-PVR 500 dual tuner
> >> > > PNY NVIDA Vetro Geforce FX 5700 VE video card
> >> > > ABIT KV7 mother board with onboard sound
> >> > > 1 GB of memory
> >> > > AMD 2600 Athlon Processor
> >> > >
> >> > > When I start Live TV it will run from a few seconds to a few minutes
> >> > > with a
> >> > > one time maximum run of about 30 minutes and then everything freezes.
> >> > > Nothing responds on the computer and it must be powered down and
> >> > > restarted.
> >> > > The FM radio function will run for less than 30 minutes too and then
> >> > > the
> >> > > system freezes. Using the DVD movie play back function played back an
> >> > > entire
> >> > > movie OK. I have all the latest drivers and software updates
> >> > > installed as of
> >> > > November 4, 2005 including NVIDA DVD Decoder, TV tuner driver, video
> >> > > card
> >> > > driver, mother board BIOS, Windows XP and Media Center updates.
> >> > >
> >> > > Any help on which way to look would be appreciated.
> >> > >
> >> > > Thanks
> >> > > Dennis
> >> > >
>
>
>
.

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