Media Center crashes randomly, ehshell.exe CLR20r3

[kurick]

I am hoping someone might be able to shed some light on this issue, because it has become extremely frustrating. I am going to try to be as brief as possible while also providing as many facts and observations as possible.

For 4 or 5 month now my Media Center application crashes while watching TV or Recorded TV. A message will say something like “Media Center has suffered an error and needs to restart”. It will close and relaunch, but usually crash again within 30 seconds. The cycle will repeat a few times until it gets to the point where it won’t relaunch unless I manually end the application via task manager. Usually I will reboot the computer at this point and it will work properly for a good length of time.

This is a brand new system that I built with all new components in early 2014, which are listed below. My feeling that this may be some kind of software issue or configuration, possibly due to a software or Windows update. This system ran flawlessly for 6 month or so, but began to have these problems around July.

I have checked the Event Viewer to try to see if any of the information in there would be helpful. When the problem occurs t usually contains the error “The program ehshell.exe version 6.1.7600.16385 stopped interacting with Windows and was closed.” Another thing I seem to see is an error referring to CLR20r3.
I tried everything I could find to try to resolve the issue, starting with re-registering Windows Media Center components (https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Fo ... itpromedia). Next I tried many of the tip located on the Silicon Dust forums (http://www.silicondust.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?t=12216) including Resetting the DRM, Resetting PlayReady and Completely Reseting Media Center.

When none of that worked I completely formatted and reinstalled Windows from scratch. The problem seemed to be resolved, but after a few weeks it returned. I tried many of the same things again with no results. I recently just reformatted and reinstalled again, and again after a couple weeks the problem has returned.

The computer and everything else on it seems to be stable. The only thing I have ever noticed crashing is Window Media Center. The first build of this machine had a lot of other things installed, like Steam and Origin with several games, torrent software. I never has any problem with any other software, but on the 2 reinstalls that I have done, I left all other software off to try to figure out if anything else is contributing to the problems. The only software on here is the necessary drivers for the motherboard chipset, the Silicon Dust HD HomeRun Prime, Ceton Echo extender and Ceton My Media Center.

If anyone can offer any advice on how to fix this problem, I would be very appreciative. Thank you.

Hardware Spec:
Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-F2A88XN-WIFI FM2+ / FM2 AMD A88X (Bolton D4)
CPU: AMD A10-7850K Kaveri 3.7GHz Socket FM2+ 95W AMD Radeon R7 series AD785KXBJABOX
RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3
OS Drive: OCZ Vertex 2 OCZSSD2-2VTX50G.RF 2.5" 50GB SATA II MLC SSD
DVR Drive: Western Digital WD AV-25 1 TB AV Hard Drive: 2.5 Inch, WD10JUCT
Case: SILVERSTONE Milo series ML05B Mini-ITX Media Center / HTPC Case
Power Supply: Silverstone Tek 450W SFX Form Factor Power Supply (ST45SF)
CPU Cooler: Noctua Low-profile Quiet CPU Cooler for AMD Based Retail Cooling NH-L9A
Case Cooling: Noctua 120mm NF-S12A PWM & Noctua 80mm NF-R8 PWM

Additional Hardware:
Tuners: Two- Silicon Dust HDHomeRunPrime HDHR3 (Cable Card, 6 Tuners total)
Tuning Adapters: Two - Time Warner Cable issued Cisco STA1520
Extenders: Two - Ceton Echo

Other information:
Windows 7
Gigabit Cat5E wired network

[holidayboy]

Do you have any Media Center add-ins installed / custom menus?

Just re-read your post...... Can you live without My Media Center (and the echo settings plugin if installed) for a while just to test?

[kurick]

Yeah, I certainly can if it make the system more stable and usable. I will give that a try and report back.

[kurick]

I uninstalled both the Ceton My Media Center app and the Ceton Echo settings software, and I am still getting the crashes.

[RyC]

Since it still happened after a reinstall, maybe bad RAM? Have you tried running memtest?

[holidayboy]

Can you post some logs please - ones that contain the CLR20r3 message might help point us in the right direction.

[ogiewon]

Welcome to my world!!!! Read the saga at http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... f=5&t=7730. My system has been behaving for about two weeks now. Who knows when it will start acting up again!!!

As you'll see from my thread on the same topic... I changed just about everything, except the CPU and Tuners. Nothing seemed to fix it. If you figure it out, I'd love to hear the solution please.

[kurick]

I want to give an updated. I uninstalled the Ceton apps as recommended by holidayboy on 11/4. I am pretty sure I still experienced crashes that day. My wife reported to me that it crashed from a Ceton extender, and I saw a crash on the Media Center PC as well. However, I have not had any crashes since then.

I don't know if this is related, but I had Time Warner Cable out here for a service appointment that day for an ongoing issue with some missing channels. I think its related to their use of the Switched Digital technology. The tech didn't know much about my setup or have much knowledge at troubleshooting cable card in general. However, he checked signal levels (recently adjusted by a previous tech) and said they were fine. He called into his dispatch (or someone else) and they "rescripted" the cable card. So far I haven't had any problems with misusing channels since then, but even better no Media Center crashes.

My gut tells me its not related to the missing channels, because the crashing problem did not seem to be triggered by going to a channel that was missing, it just seemed to happen randomly, but the timing of all this is interesting. But its only been a 3 days or so, so I might not be out of the woods yet.

The testing of memory was recommended by someone on another forum as well. I haven't done that yet, but I will move on to that next if the problem come us again, or maybe I'll test the memory regardless.

I'll report back either way.

[cwinfield]

Did you try a beta firmware? http://download.silicondust.com/hdhomer ... 4beta2.bin

Did you update your display drivers recently? This was happening with NVidia drivers and downgrading fixed for some.

http://www.silicondust.com/forum2/viewt ... it=CLR20r3

[kurick]

Well the issue has returned. I just had a crash this morning. I am posting the log below.

Fault bucket 123157355, type 22
Event Name: CLR20r3
Response: Not available
Cab Id: 0

Problem signature:
P1: ehshell.exe
P2: 6.1.7600.16385
P3: 4a5bd053
P4: System
P5: 2.0.0.0
P6: 53a12529
P7: 1fc1
P8: 1c8
P9: System.Net.WebException
P10:

Attached files:
C:\Users\TV\AppData\Local\Temp\WER41BD.tmp.WERInternalMetadata.xml

These files may be available here:
C:\Users\TV\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\WER\ReportArchive\AppCrash_ehshell.exe_f2e866e80e68f3c48f82bb8629c4bd8be78211_0d185a7a

Analysis symbol:
Rechecking for solution: 0
Report Id: 06dfa0f5-6816-11e4-9dd5-74d4351a95c0
Report Status: 0

I could not find the files it is referencing. I changed Windows Explorer options to show hidden files so I could see the AppData directory, but the WER41BD file doesnt exist. Nor does the WER directory in the second location.

I still think this is a coincidence, but I did start to suffer from some missing channels again last night. There were no crashes at that time, but still a little strange timing.

[kurick]

Wow, another victim of the same problem posted some interesting information in a reply on my post on the Silicon Dust forums. Check this out: http://www.silicondust.com/forum2/viewt ... 10#p107840

He believes it to be specifically related to the HD Home Run Prime. Has anyone had this issue with other brands of tuners?

[kurick]

Welcome to my world!!!! Read the saga at http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... f=5&t=7730. My system has been behaving for about two weeks now. Who knows when it will start acting up again!!!

As you'll see from my thread on the same topic... I changed just about everything, except the CPU and Tuners. Nothing seemed to fix it. If you figure it out, I'd love to hear the solution please.

Ogiewon, do you have a Silicon Dust tuner or another brand? I am curious to see if is related to this http://www.silicondust.com/forum2/viewt ... 10#p107840

[ogiewon]

I have a Silicondust HDHR Prime and a Ceton InfiniTV 4, each with a Cisco Tuning Adapter. I just upgraded the firmware on my Prime to other latest Beta. I had been running the 20140604 version previously. I really hope this resolves the issue (no pun intended!)

Thank you for the tip!

[ogiewon]

So far, so good. Since this issue was very intermittent, I am reluctant to call it resolved yet.

[kurick]

Same here. I upgraded to the beta Silicon Dust software, and more importantly firmware. Like you said, the problem has always been intermitent so I'm reluctant to give the all clear so far, but things look good right now.

Further, now that I realize the timeing of when I experienced the problem, I am fairly certain this is the cause of the problem. The current 'stable' firmware is July 2014. To the best of my knowledge, my problem started around July, probably sometime after I upgraded to that version of software and firmware.

So let's hope this is the answer, and the end of this saga.

[LowAmmo]

There's a non-beta release, now. And it does seem to fix the problem.

[kurick]

Thanks for the update! I will have to check it out, but I am reluctant to install it since the beta is working perfectly for me!

[ogiewon]

Thanks for the update! I will have to check it out, but I am reluctant to install it since the beta is working perfectly for me!

Agreed! While I am glad SD has released something official, I am planning on sticking with what I have for now. Everything been rock solid stable since I did the Beta update 2.5 weeks ago.

[poit57]

Since about last Wednesday, December 10, I have been having issues with WMC randomly crashing. I have only noticed it watching recorded TV, but not when watching live. I did update the Intel HD Graphics drivers, but that didn't help. I have 4 PC's connected to my HDHR Prime, but I rarely watch TV from any of them other than my HTPC in the living room.

I will check what firmware version I'm running when I get home. I think it's been a few months since I last updated. I don't know why I only recently started having this issue when other people experiencing similar issues claim that the problem has been going on for months.

[ogiewon]

I have had NO issues here since I upgrade just over 1 month ago. Keeping my fingers crossed!