Hanging issue???

[n8wei]

Hello All,

I seem to be having a strange problem with my Media Center PC. I have been away for over a year now and I just moved back to my house. Brought my MCPC along with me and set up service here. (The machine used to be set up here, working flawlessly)

When I go through the process to set up the TV Signal, I select the country, it scans for information for my region, i am prompted for my Zip Code, and it proceeds to "Examine TV Signal".

This process hangs up after about 4 of the dots on screen show up... Then nothing

System is an S1Digital MediaCenter PC, with 2 ATI Cable Tuner Cards (with cable cards installed).

Any ideas what might be hanging Media Center up?

[Scallica]

Are you using Cable or an OTA antenna? Have you tried connecting the coax cable directly to the TV and verify that a signal is present and strong enough?

Try disabling the Windows Firewall because sometimes it interferes with WMC setup.

[n8wei]

Are you using Cable or an OTA antenna?

I have two ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Card Tuners, with Cable Cards installed

Have you tried connecting the coax cable directly to the TV and verify that a signal is present and strong enough?

I did not think to do this. I don't even know if my TV has a coaxial connection on it, but I will give that a try if I can.

All of this equipment used to be working fine. I moved away for a year and now I'm back. I simply placed the equipment back in the same spot it was in, reconnected the cables, and assumed the only thing I had to do was have the cable company restart service. The only change is that there are new cable cards installed, but the cable installer guy said they were activated properly. I listened in on the call to "dispatch" when he had the cards paired up, and there were no indications of any issues getting the cards activated and paired up.

The cable internet connection is working fine and the cable guy did test the line. But I will give this a try and see if the TV itself can tune anything in.

Try disabling the Windows Firewall because sometimes it interferes with WMC setup.

I will also give this a try. Thanks for the tip. (Although, I did run the "Setup TV Signal" wizard just fine at my previous location and there were no issues. Hmmm...)

[n8wei]

Have you tried connecting the coax cable directly to the TV and verify that a signal is present and strong enough?

I did this yesterday evening (about 12 hours ago) and the TV was able to tune many digital channels. I did not compare them with what I'm "supposed" to be getting. But it looks like the signal is good.

Additionally, when I disconnected the coax from the TV Wonder card, an LED that was previously green, turned red. I'm assuming that this LED indicates signal on the coax...

Try disabling the Windows Firewall because sometimes it interferes with WMC setup.

I did this after tuning the channels on the TV. I ran the Setup TV Signal wizard again, and it still locks up. I let it run all night long with no results.

Do you have any other ideas?

[Scallica]

Yes, although you may not like it. I would suggest clearing WMC's entire configuration and starting from scratch.

1. Stop the Windows Media Center Receiver Service and Scheduler Service
2. Go to C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\ehome (hidden path) and delete all files
3. Start WMC again and re-run the tv signal setup wizard

[n8wei]

Yes, although you may not like it. I would suggest clearing WMC's entire configuration and starting from scratch.

Thank you for that suggestion. Between sending the last note and receiving this reply, I was able to resolve the issue with someone who walked me through several steps to get things resolved.

I had actually already tried clearing out the eHome data and that did not work.

I also ran the Scheduled Task (Windows 7) titled, "Windows Media Center Recovery", which actually does the same thing you describe, as well as clearing out a lot more WMC data. I had to run through the entire setup from scratch. FYI... This did not fix the problem either.

I was told by someone who has experience with the ATI TV Wonder cards that sometimes they present problems. He had me uninstall the devices (deleting the drivers from the hard drive) and reboot, to allow the devices to re-identify themselves. FYI... This did not fix the probem either.

Eventually, he had me cancel the "Examining TV Signals" screen before it got to the spot it was locking up (4 dots), and then go through the configuration manually, selecting my cable provider from the list. The first time I tried this, I did not get the "Cable Card" option. I had to uninstall the ATI TV Wonder cards and reboot, TWO MORE TIMES before I finally got the option to select "Digital (CableCard)" from the list.

After going through all of this, I was able to get the channel information configured and the guide information downloaded successfully.

The only problem I had after that was that only very basic channels would tune in (20 and below). I had to talk with the cable network provider (Charter Communications) to get the channels which were configured on my account, assigned to the cable cards, so that I could tune them in.

So in closing... I really appreciate your attempts to guide me in the right direction here. Hopefully by documenting my steps, that might help someone else who stumbles across this. Ultimately, I'm not sure what the key was to fix things. I wonder if I had just gone through the manual configuration of the TV Signals (hitting cancel) before all this started, if things would have worked without having to clear out all of WMC's data, or re-install the card drivers. Or perhaps something about the way my cable account was provisioned, was causing some bug to surface in WMC...

Who knows... Regardless, this has been quite the little adventure for me. Now I'm going to kick back and set all of my recording settings back up.

Thanks again!

[Scallica]

Interesting, thanks for following up!

[n8wei]

Interesting, thanks for following up!

Of course... I usually try to put closure on these things, in case someone else is reading the thread, looking to solve a similar problem.

[n8wei]

Interesting, thanks for following up!

Of course... I usually try to put closure on these things, in case someone else is reading the thread, looking to solve a similar problem.

Funny thing is... I ran into this same problem when my cable company recently decided to do a complete rebuild of channel lineups and I had to refresh my listing information.

Here it is, 3 years later, and like most old people like me, I forgot how I solved it the first time. So I naturally started searching the net for solutions. And what do you know? I found my way here and the tip to cancel before the scanning got to the 4 dots worked again!

Guess I saved myself this time!

Must be something to do with Media Center having a hard time communicating with my equipment trying to scan the signals and detect my provider automatically.

[3rob3]

Nice, funny when things work out that way. There was a firmware update years ago for the ATI cablecard tuners. Do you remember if you ever applied it?

[n8wei]

Nice, funny when things work out that way. There was a firmware update years ago for the ATI cablecard tuners. Do you remember if you ever applied it?

I'm not sure I had a firmware update. I know that I updated the Catalyst Software Suite.

The real problem is the fact that my cable provider went to Switched Digital, so in addition to the two ATI All In Wonder HD cards, I now have two Tuning Adapters, each with their own USB cable connecting them to the PC, each with their own power cords and wall warts plugged into the power strip, and each with their own coax connection in from the provider, complete with in-line amplifier to make sure the signal strength meets the extremely finicky requirements of the Tuning Adapter. It's an ugly, monstrous solution with tons of extra cables and wires.

To add to the pain level, the things regularly lose their programming from the headend, requiring a visit from a technician, only for them to call into the office and explain to some severely uneducated call center support rep what they have to do in order to re-provision the tuning adapters after their system reset all the provisioning during their most recent "system upgrade".

< / s o a p b o x >

On the plus side, my (now unsupported) S1Digital Media Center has been running nearly flawlessly for more than 7 years, servicing 3 XBOX 360 extenders, and 2 shared drive connected laptops, except for this one annoying issue, which crops its head up whenever there are significant enough changes where I have to re-select my cable network provider and channel lineup. Fortunately, I stumbled across the following post that allowed me to back up and restore my schedule information:

http://www.hack7mc.com/2009/03/backup-a ... edule.html

[3rob3]

I think it would be worth it to upgrade to a Ceton or Silicon Dust cablecard tuner. Not only would you get 1-4 extra tuners (depending on the model), but you would get better stability, one less tuning adapter, and one less cablecard to rent.

[signcarver]

I would usually agree with updating to either a prime or a ceton cablecard tuner as he would get at least 1 more tuner (3 tuners with prime, 4 or 6 with ceton vs only 2 between his 2 DCTs)) and eliminate one tuner device, one cablecard rental, and one TA, and the new tuner will be able to handle simulcrypt areas as well as channels above 800MHz (might have been as low as 750 MHz for the ATI) if the cable company chose to go that route. However this original thread is old enough that it might not have moved correctly into the right area of the forum (legacy) as I thought the S1 came with vista not windows 7 and it wasn't clear if this machine had been updated to windows 7 (one would assume that since this is the Windows 7 Media Center part of the forum)... If this person is still on Vista and not interested in upgrading, the newer tuners won't fully work. For some reason I did think the ATI tuner had a pcie interface (not exposed) but actually only used an internal USB connection and power from a "floppy" power cable so it might also be important to check if there is a pcie slot available if they wish to use an internal ceton card.

[3rob3]

He is running Windows 7.

I also ran the Scheduled Task (Windows 7) titled, "Windows Media Center Recovery", which actually does the same thing you describe, as well as clearing out a lot more WMC data. I had to run through the entire setup from scratch. FYI... This did not fix the problem either.

[n8wei]

Hey People,

Thank you for chiming in. I would really love to update the tuner cards in this machine. They are a product of an era when regulations were restricting the number of tuners per card, or some such silly thing as I recall. I checked out both options that you provided. It seems that the Prime devices are all external, unless I didn't look into the right product. I'd rather not add any external items to this PC. It's already a full size chassi and the center channel for the receiver sits on top of it, right under the TV.

It also appears that the Ceton products (InfinityTV4/6) both list 64bit OS as a requirement. I'm not sure if this is an optimal or hard requirement, but my system is only 32bit. It was purchased in 2007/2008, and came installed with Vista from S1Digital, with a free upgrade to Windows 7 Ultimate, when it was released. System specs are below:

Code: Select all

------------------
System Information
------------------
Time of this report: 7/29/2014, 11:28:52
   Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit (6.1, Build 7601) Service Pack 1 (7601.win7sp1_gdr.140303-2144)
           Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: INTEL
       System Model: DP45SG
               BIOS: BIOS Date: 08/15/08 15:04:09 Ver: 08.00.10
          Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU     E8500  @ 3.16GHz (2 CPUs), ~3.2GHz
             Memory: 4096MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 3324MB RAM
          Page File: 1173MB used, 11364MB available
    DirectX Version: DirectX 11
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
   User DPI Setting: Using System DPI
 System DPI Setting: 120 DPI (125 percent)
    DWM DPI Scaling: Disabled
     DxDiag Version: 6.01.7601.17514 32bit Unicode

[3rob3]

I have run InfiniTV 4's in 32 bit Win7. They worked great. I think the 64 bit requirement is for Win8 only.