Troubleshooting my SB-K computer for its HVR-2250 and SiliconDust HD Homerun Prime

[BonzaiDuck]

I have both the HD HomeRun PRime on my home network and the Hauppauge HVR-2250 card in my main system.

Keep in mind that I have an OC'd system, but I do not believe this is causing me the problem I have. I've gone back, reset to stock for a while, then reviewed and retested every BIOS profile. I only improved the settings with that exercise. But the problem persists. I even replaced my RAM unnecessarily. Troubleshooting my problem takes much patience, because it occurs regularly but only every week and a half or so.

I leave the system on 24/7. It does not sleep. Maybe I'll burn out my LG 42" HDTV or even my ONKYO receiver, but that would be through use. I sleep irregular hours and leave the TV (and Media Center computer) running all the time.

About every 10 to 12 days, I experience some instability. This always occurs while running Media Center. The system resets unannounced, or only occasionally gets a BSOD. The HDMI audio feed from my NVidia graphics card may leave the AVR blaring an "ANGGGGGG . . . " sound and the Media Center TV screen freezes. The mouse freezes -- the whole system freezes, and I have to hit the reset button.

During August last year, I was working on a mortgage refinance package very intensively, and left the TV set to its "basic cable" input feed -- which is to say I wasn't running media center. I didn't have a reset for that entire month. I should have made note right away that the problem might relate to MC and my media hardware.

So I mentioned the RAM, which I replaced. Turns out that wasn't the problem. I updated and installed all my VGA drivers and software. I updated just about every hardware driver I can think of, including the chipset drivers, the SATA (both Intel and Marvel) drivers, the network drivers and so on.

But I never updated my Hauppauge HVR-2250 driver, and I never updated my HDHomeRun software, driver and firmware.

I finally got around to looking at these two items. Reviewing SiliconDust's change logs for its software and firmware, I see earlier revisions which fixed "crashes . . . freezes . . . " etc. It dawned on me that I had completely overlooked this item, because it ISN'T "PART OF" MY COMPUTER SYSTEM -- IT'S A NETWORK DEVICE.

Before contacting both manufacturers to see if they can enlighten me, I thought I'd drop by here to check if anyone with either the HVR-2250, the HDHomeRun Prime or BOTH have had similar problems.

This has got to be the most elusive problem I've faced, and because it only surfaces over a period of a week or two when the computer is on 24/7, it is hard to identify immediately whether I fixed the problem or not.

I just updated my HDHomeRun Prime SW, Driver and firmware. I'm going to do the same with the Hauppauge tuner, which I just downloaded. Any insights or identification of similar problems by others would be helpful.

 

[Anuextreme117]

Wooh, That's Complex Man!

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Wooh, That's Complex Man!

Well, I could use one computer for some few tasks with tasks spread across many, or I could use . . . one computer for everything.

The complexity is in the infrequency of the hiccups. If I tweak one thing and hope to discard it or identify it as a cause, I have to wait at least two weeks. Which . . . is quite insane.

The system is so great otherwise, I am going to solve this if I have to stay up day and night for a month. It helps, though, if someone has "intel" about similar problems and their causes . . .

 

[tential]

Just update the drivers and see if it does anything?

Why ask us first before doing it?

 

[SaurusX]

For my HTPC (AMD based), I found that there is a magic combination of drivers that are crucial for smooth operation. What I have in there right now works fantastically, and in fact this reminds me I need to go back and document what I currently have installed. But previous to the most recent install I would get random BSOD's when turning on the TV even though the computer remained on at all times.

I would also sometimes get the dreaded "mute bug" that seemed to plague AMD systems for the longest time. That situation appeared when you muted the system audio only to have the audio driver crash sometime later (hours or days later) and unable to be recovered without rebooting.

Like I said, it's a crap shoot to find that right combo of video and audio drivers for your particular hardware. No one said HTPC's were easy. That's my take on your situation.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

For my HTPC (AMD based), I found that there is a magic combination of drivers that are crucial for smooth operation. What I have in there right now works fantastically, and in fact this reminds me I need to go back and document what I currently have installed. But previous to the most recent install I would get random BSOD's when turning on the TV even though the computer remained on at all times.

I would also sometimes get the dreaded "mute bug" that seemed to plague AMD systems for the longest time. That situation appeared when you muted the system audio only to have the audio driver crash sometime later (hours or days later) and unable to be recovered without rebooting.

Like I said, it's a crap shoot to find that right combo of video and audio drivers for your particular hardware. No one said HTPC's were easy. That's my take on your situation.

The hiccups -- Event ID 41 causes -- have been resolved. I was never able to pinpoint the cause with certainty. The "shakedown" troubleshooting unveiled several things: An Asmedia USB3 controller that wasn't working anymore with the USB3 hub I'd attached to it; a graphics card that was running too hot; ISRT drivers that needed updating; Network drivers that (really!) needed updating; an Hauppauge 2250 tuner that needed updated drivers (and worst of it -- old XP driver crap that got into the system when I tried to install an older Hauppauge PVR "SD" tuner). I had to use Hauppauge's HWClear crap-remover to get rid of that stuff.

There were other things. I traced the sources of about every red-bang and yellow-bang event-viewer error and warning, and I got rid of a good part of them.

So the problem was never the overclock settings. In fact, I keep wondering if the hardware and driver problems "drove" me to VCORE settings higher than necessary, but after looking at the settings of other i7-SB-K users and their systems, I pretty much doubt it.

To date, 24/7 operation with no instability. I was just checking the event logs. Apparently, the Event ID 41 entries stopped occurring before middle of last month -- March. In fact, the logs only go back that far -- at this point.

I'm still suspicious that the real problem -- despite remarks from the SiliconDust folks as pertains to their own product -- came from a DCOM error owing to a mis-assigned security privilege that prevented the service from loading. This was linked to network device discovery -- possibly also to DHCP renewal. So with all the traffic coming from the HDHomeRun Prime, and the fact that these problems always occurred with Media Center Live TV running, I have to speculate that issue as a major contributor to the problem. When Media center wasn't running for a month, there were no "hiccups."

So you're right about "HTPC" configurations, and even more so for all-in-one computer usage that folds HTPC into the mix. My experience should be a major suggestion to people with either dedicated HTPC application or a "blend" such as mine: Check your event logs for symptoms of problems; make sure all the hardware and drivers are working properly. That would also be useful for anyone building a new computer intended for a stable overclock.