Have recently put together my first attempt at a HTPC, but am plagued by an annoying problem.
On average 1 time for each DVD I watch, the PC will 'freeze' or 'hang'. It's totally dead; the only solution is to hit the power button and reboot. It happens on virtually all my DVDs, at random places. If I subsequently return to a location on a DVD where the PC froze, it always plays over that same spot without trouble, so I'm almost certain it's not the media.
I get no forewarning of any sorts - suddenly the image freezes and stays on screen. Occationally, the sound will be looping, and sometimes the leds indicating sound format - DTS, DD, PCM will be flickering rapidly on my surround decoder (hooked up via SP/DIFF). Been trying the various sound output options in TT - like waveout and Directsound, but the lockups happen no matter which one I use.
I suspect it may be something to do with the soundcard, as I didn't see the problem when I did some preliminary testing of the PC and projector, with an old Soundblaster Live installed instead of the M-Audio Revolution 7.1.
The PC is built on a Dell Optiplex GX-150 I had standing around. It's a PIII 933 MHz, with 512 MB RAM. I've added a Liteon DVD drive, a Tyan Tachyon G9600 Pro (Radeon 9600 Pro gf-card), and the aforementioned M-Audio Revolution 7.1. Operating system is Win XP Pro with SP1 and all updates, including DX9. Drivers from ATI and M-Audio are the newest (Catalyst 3.10 and 1.0.2.6 (5.10.00.0052)). Theatertek is the newest version. I also use Powerstrip v3.47 build 425 and DVD Region Killer v.2.7
I have written TT's support and gotten some suggestions from them, like having DMA enabled, and keeping the DVD drive on a separate IDE channel from the HD. Both of these are in order, and the only other suggestion they had was to change my Liteon drive to a Pioneer or Toshiba. Haven't been willing to do the latter yet, as I'm far from connvinced it will solve the problem.
I've been using XP Pro for a while in my main computer and generally find it quite stable; very rarely does a program lock the computer so completely as it happens on the HTPC.
Bit at a loss about what to do about it, so any suggestions or ideas would be most welcome.
Thanks in advance for any replies,
Erling
On average 1 time for each DVD I watch, the PC will 'freeze' or 'hang'. It's totally dead; the only solution is to hit the power button and reboot. It happens on virtually all my DVDs, at random places. If I subsequently return to a location on a DVD where the PC froze, it always plays over that same spot without trouble, so I'm almost certain it's not the media.
I get no forewarning of any sorts - suddenly the image freezes and stays on screen. Occationally, the sound will be looping, and sometimes the leds indicating sound format - DTS, DD, PCM will be flickering rapidly on my surround decoder (hooked up via SP/DIFF). Been trying the various sound output options in TT - like waveout and Directsound, but the lockups happen no matter which one I use.
I suspect it may be something to do with the soundcard, as I didn't see the problem when I did some preliminary testing of the PC and projector, with an old Soundblaster Live installed instead of the M-Audio Revolution 7.1.
The PC is built on a Dell Optiplex GX-150 I had standing around. It's a PIII 933 MHz, with 512 MB RAM. I've added a Liteon DVD drive, a Tyan Tachyon G9600 Pro (Radeon 9600 Pro gf-card), and the aforementioned M-Audio Revolution 7.1. Operating system is Win XP Pro with SP1 and all updates, including DX9. Drivers from ATI and M-Audio are the newest (Catalyst 3.10 and 1.0.2.6 (5.10.00.0052)). Theatertek is the newest version. I also use Powerstrip v3.47 build 425 and DVD Region Killer v.2.7
I have written TT's support and gotten some suggestions from them, like having DMA enabled, and keeping the DVD drive on a separate IDE channel from the HD. Both of these are in order, and the only other suggestion they had was to change my Liteon drive to a Pioneer or Toshiba. Haven't been willing to do the latter yet, as I'm far from connvinced it will solve the problem.
I've been using XP Pro for a while in my main computer and generally find it quite stable; very rarely does a program lock the computer so completely as it happens on the HTPC.
Bit at a loss about what to do about it, so any suggestions or ideas would be most welcome.
Thanks in advance for any replies,
Erling
