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Annoying lockups for Live TV and Recordings

Submitted by chewtoy11 on September 1, 2009 - 2:15pm

Just a quick overview of my hardware:


  • Intel E5200 CPU
  • Intel DG41TY Motherboard
  • Nvidia GeForce 9400 GT (512MB DDR2)
  • 2GB RAM
  • Hauppauge HVR-1600 PCI card
  • Seagate 1TB SATA drive

The system had been working perfectly for months -- with NO lockups/freezing whatsoever. In all fairness, there was a somewhat recent hardware change. When the system was first installed, I was borrowing and using an Nvidia 7300LE PCIe video card through a DVI->HDMI cable and getting 1080p. Later, I swapped the card with an Nvidia 9400GT PCIe card. I got an additional problem-free month of use after this switch.

2 Notable Symptoms:


  1. I'm getting the dreaded "NVP: Timed out waiting for free video buffers" error, which I tried to correct by following the tips on this page:

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Troubleshooting:NVP:_Timed_out_waiting_for_free_video_buffers

  • Sometimes, maybe 25% of the time, I'm getting garbled video corruption on the Front End GUI.

    One suggestion on a page mentioned that there was an Nvidia xorg.conf file in the Extras directory. After discovering this, I promptly put it in place, which appeared to give me 2 days of problem-free use. Normally this problem will surface after a couple hours of LiveTV play from a cold boot. It appears to only be affecting playback, and not the recording process.

    • ‹ malformed icon key Multi frontend system suggestions ›

    re: Annoying lockups for Live TV and Recordings

    Submitted by mgpalmer on September 1, 2009 - 6:59pm.

    chewtoy11 wrote:

    Just a quick overview of my hardware:


    • Intel E5200 CPU
    • Intel DG41TY Motherboard
    • Nvidia GeForce 9400 GT (512MB DDR2)
    • 2GB RAM
    • Hauppauge HVR-1600 PCI card
    • Seagate 1TB SATA drive

    There is a known problem with some Seagate drives, described here:
    http://www.tomshardware.com/news/seagate-7200.11-failing,6844.html
    A firmware update for your drive might help this problem.
    --
    Michael Palmer

    —

    --
    Michael Palmer

    »

    Well, I have one of the

    Submitted by chewtoy11 on September 2, 2009 - 3:05pm.

    Well, I have one of the exact models listed, but evidently my firmware revision excludes me from the update...

    Model: ST31000333AS
    Serial: 5TE0GCD4
    Firmware: CC1H

    I did download the ISO and attempt the firmware update, but it says my drive is not what is expected, even though the expected model and my model number are exact matches. According to "hdparm -i /dev/sda" the drive is running in UDMA6 (so, at least there don't appear to be any reduced performance modes being used).

    Oh well, I had a lot of strange problems with MythDora 10.21 x86_64 from the beginning (regarding the use of wireless adapters and CX18, etc). I might eventually break down and give Mythbuntu a shot. Although, I'd really just like it to "work" again, so I don't have to back up 500GB of children's recordings and do a database dump.

    Any other ideas?

    »

    This looks to be my exact

    Submitted by chewtoy11 on September 2, 2009 - 2:26pm.

    This looks to be my exact model (from memory). When I get home, I'm gonna give that a shot. Thanks, Michael!

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