Live TV freezes on one channel only

[matt_f]

I've been using WMC for about a year and a half with minimal issues - Win7, HD Homerun, rooftop antenna for OTA TV. I recently added a 2nd HD to the setup to accommodate a growing movie collection, freeing up space on the existing HD (a 2TB Western Digital) for more recorded TV. However, after freeing up space on the original HD and increasing the Maximum TV limit to 1.5GB, one channel (NBC in the Atlanta area, channel 11.1) freezes up while watching live TV after a few minutes. Changing to another channel and then back un-freezes the channel, but it freezes up again after a few minutes. It only does this on this one channel. I found that reducing the Maximum TV limit delays the onset of the freezing problem. I thought I had the issue resolved by reducing the Maximum TV limit to 1.0GB, but after no issues for several days the freezing is back. I reduced the Maximum TV limit to 800GB this morning and so far no freezing, but I'm now using less than half the drive. It seems like a buffer issue with the drive, but I don't know why reducing Maximum TV limit affects this. Any help is much appreciated. Thanks!

[DanH]

It sounds like a problem with the Hard drive. It could be as simple as the drive being so fragmented that it is slow in reading, but more likely it is a sign that the drive is starting to fail.

I would first perform a defrag on the drive. if that does not solve the problem, then do a chkdsk /B.

Sometimes the chkdsk command will locate the bad sectors and mark them unusable and that fixes the problem. Other times, I have been unable to resolve the problem via chkdsk and have to replace the drive.

Based on a reading of your steps, it is likely this bad area of the drive was being used by some old file that has since been moved to your new HD or deleted during that process. Now the system is trying to use that space for Live TV. The one thing that I can't explain is why this is only happening on one channel...maybe it has a higher bitrate than your other locals.

Lastly, check that all of your coax cables are tightly connected to everything.

[matt_f]

DanH - thanks for the reply. No fragmentation, so I'm running chkdsk. Actually tried running it earlier today and it stalled before completing, so second run is in progress. I'll report back results tomorrow.

[matt_f]

Well, chkdsk completed and showed no issues with the drive. I also confirmed all coax cables are tightly connected. To try to validate whether it's an issue with the drive, I copied all content from the new drive (which is also a 2TB Western Digital) back to the existing drive (movies, music, etc.), and all recorded TV to the new drive, then set the new drive as the "record on" drive in WMC. The issue is still happening, so it appears to be something other than the drive going bad. I'm thinking of moving all files off the original drive, re-formatting it, then seeing if the issue still occurs (without copying any files back to the drive) - not sure if that makes sense, but it would eliminate the possibility, however remote, that it's a corrupt file causing this. Any other ideas to try?

[barnabas1969]

Have you used a tool, such as Crystal Disk Info, to look at the SMART info on the drive? This may show you information that chkdsk does not.

[matt_f]

Barnabas, thanks for the suggestion. I grabbed GSmartControl off of Sourceforge and ran self-tests on both drives, but neither is reporting any errors. I also tried re-formatting the original drive, but that didn't help either. Last night I tried splitting the two signal sources that WMC was combining for the channel, and was then able to watch without any errors for an hour and a half. This morning, I set it to record the Today show for 2 hours to see what would happen. Just checked the recording and it crapped out after 3 minutes - back to the drawing board.

Does anyone know of any logging in WMC or Windows that might shed light on this issue? Any other idea? As always, thanks in advance for the help.

[tipstir]

How much memory in the system? I 4 tuners on side of the network using HD HomeRun. HD-ANT outside is dual type I get 80 miles range North and South with that. Amp on ANT which goes into 8-way drop amp. Use Dual Coax RG6 instead of Quad Coax RG6 which I make my own here. No issues. HD HomeRuns need to be power recycle though. Silcon Dust is suppose to come out with Gen 4 model soon. I use two laptops as DVR. But the system HDD needs to be defrag or optimized the blocks on it. But again I use WD Passport 500G to 1TB for recording via USB. Your system might not be at 100%. I run Wise 360, Slim Cleaner, JetClean, Windows Free Tuner (cleaning program), UnCleaner and Ultra Defrag. Run programs manually. Once a week on DVR laptop.

[barnabas1969]

Barnabas, thanks for the suggestion. I grabbed GSmartControl off of Sourceforge and ran self-tests on both drives, but neither is reporting any errors.

I didn't ask you to run self tests, I asked you to look at the SMART data. Certain elements in SMART will tell you if the drive is beginning to fail, even if it passes other tests. I don't know anything about GSmartControl, but I do know that Crystal Disk Info will tell you exactly which SMART elements indicate a potential failure of the drive.

[barnabas1969]

How much memory in the system? I 4 tuners on side of the network using HD HomeRun. HD-ANT outside is dual type I get 80 miles range North and South with that. Amp on ANT which goes into 8-way drop amp. Use Dual Coax RG6 instead of Quad Coax RG6 which I make my own here. No issues. HD HomeRuns need to be power recycle though. Silcon Dust is suppose to come out with Gen 4 model soon. I use two laptops as DVR. But the system HDD needs to be defrag or optimized the blocks on it. But again I use WD Passport 500G to 1TB for recording via USB. Your system might not be at 100%. I run Wise 360, Slim Cleaner, JetClean, Windows Free Tuner (cleaning program), UnCleaner and Ultra Defrag. Run programs manually. Once a week on DVR laptop.

I don't think the OP's problem has anything to do with memory, based on the symptoms he described. It could be a signal strength problem though. The OP should check the signal strength of the problem channel in the HD HomeRun software to confirm before changing any wiring.

I recommend NEVER, EVER running any kind of "cleaner" program that purports to clean your registry and such. These programs usually do more harm than good, and many of them contain malware.

And, the best defrag program I've ever found, by far, is MyDefrag. It not only defrag's your drive, but it also optimizes file placement. Of course, you should never defrag an SSD.

[tipstir]

How much memory in the system? I 4 tuners on side of the network using HD HomeRun. HD-ANT outside is dual type I get 80 miles range North and South with that. Amp on ANT which goes into 8-way drop amp. Use Dual Coax RG6 instead of Quad Coax RG6 which I make my own here. No issues. HD HomeRuns need to be power recycle though. Silcon Dust is suppose to come out with Gen 4 model soon. I use two laptops as DVR. But the system HDD needs to be defrag or optimized the blocks on it. But again I use WD Passport 500G to 1TB for recording via USB. Your system might not be at 100%. I run Wise 360, Slim Cleaner, JetClean, Windows Free Tuner (cleaning program), UnCleaner and Ultra Defrag. Run programs manually. Once a week on DVR laptop.

I don't think the OP's problem has anything to do with memory, based on the symptoms he described. It could be a signal strength problem though. The OP should check the signal strength of the problem channel in the HD HomeRun software to confirm before changing any wiring.

I recommend NEVER, EVER running any kind of "cleaner" program that purports to clean your registry and such. These programs usually do more harm than good, and many of them contain malware.

And, the best defrag program I've ever found, by far, is MyDefrag. It not only defrag's your drive, but it also optimizes file placement. Of course, you should never defrag an SSD.

Like I said everyone going to do things differently I have to run cleaners and I run them when the system is first built. The on regular bases. You have to Windows OS File structure gets fragmented, the registry gets currupt by bad applications that don't know how to take care of their business. FONT GDI, MCX these are some of the files that causes issues. I be if you run a very good cleaner your'll be amazed how your system is. is My laptop runs 24/7 and reports about 8-10 hrs per day of the shows that are scheduled. There is only one channel out of 71 HD that is not HD. That one won't show up even on the TVs. Re-scan the channels when new or old channels are updated. Where I live they finally added HSN over the air. More are coming.

Below is a free app for Windows 7. This is running on my larger memory system. But still you get a quick low down of what's going on. This is a manual program doesn't run in the background or like the or TSR days.

[matthers]

I have run into the same problem but am in the process of rectifying it now.
Symptoms:
Watching a channel and the picture would freeze for sometimes several minutes and I would get a poor TV signal warning. Am guessing this is Windows presuming that you've lost reception when really it just can't read from the disk, because when watching TV you're always reading from the disk. Looking at the resource monitor on Windows 7 and also perfmon on the physical disk, the average queue length would go straight to 100% and sit there. Didn't happen with all the channels though...

Test:
I plugged in an external 2.5inch disk and told Media Center to use that as the Recorded TV drive. Problem disappeared.
As part of the test I had to ensure the timeshifting files were being written to the new drive and not the old drive. This took some kicking and I had to actually record a TV channel before I saw the timeshifting files start to use the new disk. To view the timeshifting files I had to show protected files and look in E:\Recorded TV\TempRec\TempSBE. I have 23 files in there, and am guessing that each one is dedicated to a TV channel. Therefore, if your disk has an issue and the file which its is writing to has a bad sector, that will continually give you problems when watching that channel unless you go and delete the file.

Solution:
I copied over all the recorded tv files to another drive, and some of them failed to copy confirming my thoughts about a bad drive. Once I copied over everything I reformatted the drive, not quick format, and also chose 64k clusters as recorded tv files are massive so this will reduce disk defragmentation without loss of much disk space.

I also ran the Crystal disk utility mentioned in the thread and the drive is shown as Caution or Warning. Will see how I go now I've fully reformatted it but believe this will fix the issue.

Hope this helps!