Xbox360 Media Center extender freezing

[onlyhuman]

Hi all, hoping someone has some good knowledge and can help me through this issue.

Background: I have been running Win7 x64 Media Center for 5 years on my current computer with no problems. I have recently upgraded to Win10 and of course lost Media Center. I found an old Dell Optiplex 990 desktop and installed Win7 x64 and configured Media Center. It has a SSD hard drive and 8Gb RAM. It's on the same network, same Xbox 360, only change is the Media Center PC is a new build.

Problem: When playing recorded TV through the Xbox 360 extender it will freeze up every few minutes. Sometimes if you let it sit the video will start playing again. Sometimes you can hit pause/play to get it started again. I see the same issue wen playing live TV but not as bad. I do not have the problems when playing the video directly from the Media Center PC.

What I have tried:
Updated BIOS and all drivers
Tested both wifi and wired, same problem
Enabled Flow Control (Rx and Tx) on PC
Enabled Jumbo Packets (tested both 4088 & 9014)
Set NIC Link Speed to 100Mb Full Duplex, also tested 1Gb Full Duplex
Disabled AV (MS Security Essentials) Real-Time scanning
Upgraded Router Firmware and reset all settings to default

Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks!

[randman]

Is the XBOX getting too hot? I purchased a used XBOX 360 and set it up as an extender. It ran fine for a while and then would freeze every so often and sometimes not even boot up. I eventually took it apart and re-applied some thermal paste to the heat sink and that resolved the issue for me. I has been running fine for about 8 months now. This may be completely unrelated to your issue, but this was my experience with a similar situation. It had nothing to do with my PC.

[adam1991]

I realize you've done quite a bit, but this is almost always an issue with the network infrastructure--from the drivers on your Win7 PC through to the end of the cable that's plugged into the XBox.

[onlyhuman]

The Xbox stays very cool, I have a cabinet cooling fan that keeps the temps down. I have a second Xbox360 that I tested last night and had the same problems.

I agree with you adam1991 that is seems to be network related. Since the only variable that has changed is the Dell 990 desktop I am going to focus my efforts there. The router, xbox and cabling was all fine when the MediaCenter was set up on my other PC. I plan on picking up a new network card and will test that out.

Thanks!

[onlyhuman]

After further investigation I was able to resolve the problem. It turns out the hard drive (secondary where I store recordings) was starting to fail and Media Center was having issues reading the disk quick enough to keep up with the playback. The strange thing is this is the disk I have used in my old Media Center PC without issues. This is why I didn't suspect it. The hard drive is now replaced and Media Center is working great.

Note: I have also switched my Xbox 360 to wifi and the playback continues to work perfectly.

[adam1991]

Aha, so it was a data transfer problem--which is usually network infrastructure, but as you point out not always.

Must remember to file that away.

[randman]

Thanks for posting your solution. So many times these types of threads across the web are just left hanging.

[STC]

A decent smart monitoring tool for your platters is a useful thing. It would forewarn you of a problem.

[onlyhuman]

Good call man! I looked into free SMART disk monitoring apps and found 2 great apps that I'll list below if anyone is interested. They both work really well, but I went with Acronis Drive Monitor since the CrystalDiskInfo did not work well with my email (for email alerts). That was important since I wont log into the machine often so an email alert will keep me in the loop if any problems are detected.

Acronis Drive Monitor - http://www.acronis.com/en-us/homecomput ... index.html

CrystalDiskInfo - http://crystalmark.info/software/Crysta ... dex-e.html