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[Mastiff]

Well, it's cold here now, but it's not that cold!  What happens is that I have frequent lockups of the TV image with my WinTV PVR USB2, so I have to press the stop button and then play again to restart the TV. And sometimes I even have full lockups, so I have to use the power button for three seconds or the reset button to restart the computer. It's with MC12, but I wanted to post it herer since it may be related to the TV part, not MC12. I haven't tried with MC11, though.

I have the latest drivers from the Hauppauge website, so I don't think it's a driver issue, and this is on a Slipstreamed XP SP2 install with all Windows updates, so there shouldn't be any problems there either. Any advice would be appreciated!

[JimH]

Is the device plugged directly into the PC or into a hub?  I've seen problems that went away when I moved from the hub to the PC.

What happens if you unplug the device and plug it in again when it freezes?

[Mastiff]

It's actually plugged into the loose bracket on the back of the computer, which has a cable directly to the motherboard. So I believe that would be the same as plugging it into the hub.

I haven't tried to unplug and plug in again because the computer is up in the attic, and it takes a ladder to get up there! I set it to playback a few hours ago, and now it has frozen totally. I can at least exclude heat as the problem, the motherboard temperature was around 20 degrees, and the CPU temperature was around 25 degrees (gotta be some kind of record for an air cooled AMD XP2600!). But the PVR USB isn't freezing because it's cold either. I have put it inside the PC case, where the CD drives normally are because the attic has mouse from time to time! So the loose bracket is actually laying inside the case as well, strapped to a cable so it can't short circuit anything.

Edit: I'm  now gonna install the WinTV software to see if that freezes as well. It's useless anyhow, because you have no aspect ratios that will fit my 1440x900 LCD monitor, but at least it will help diagnosing the problem.

[Mastiff]

OK, MC's off the hook. The WinTV sofware also froze the computer completely. And it even uses overlay instead of VMR, like MC, so this is something deeper and more sinister, my dear doctor Watson. (I always wanted to say that!) Gonna change to another graphic card driver and see.

[JimH]

Did you try reading about driver versions for your device?  Some are better than others.  A search here might reveal something:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=26

[Mastiff]

Thanks! I will have a look. Because changing the display driver didn't help a bit. It freezes again after a while. It seems to happen when the rest of the computer is inactive. Perhaps I can let something run in the background...

[JimH]

Screensaver?  Or Energy settings?

[Mastiff]

None of the above. I have everything set to never sleep, stop or anything because it's so cold up there that a hard drive won't work very well if it gets that cold. I have 77 F CPU temp and 68 F mother board temp, so you can guess what will happen if it stops too long... And I don't use a screensaver. But I was thinking about letting a program run and see if that keeps it alive. Perhaps something as simple as an eternal ping?

Edit: Come to think of it, the PSU may be on the anorectic side for a KT4v 2600 ATI 9800 Pro system, with 300 or 350 watts. Maybe I should go up on the attic tomorrow and change it? It never freezes when TV's not running, though. I have been running other stuff for a long time with no freezes.

[Mastiff]

Found! SHS at the AVS Forum told me that it's the VIA chipset that doesn't want to play nice with any PVR product. Gonna do a motherboard swap with the kitchen computer, which has a Celeron/Intel setup instead.