Multimedia center freezes during TV capture

[whjones]

Aloha everyone,

I recently purchased a new hard drive to use as my primary hard drive. Needless to say, I reinstalled Windows XP and all my other software - I had lots of time over the weekend The problem I'm now having is that when I'm attempting to capture TV shows, the recording stops after a varying length of time. In other words, it stopped once after 29 minutes, and once again after 45 minutes. This has happened both when I recorded "on the fly" as well as when I scheduled it. My configuration is as follows:

P4 3.0Ghz CPU
2Gb RAM
SOYO P41875P Dragon 2 motherboard
ATI All-In-Wonder 9600 Pro
250Gb HDD (master-primary IDE controller)
160Gb HDD (slave-primary IDE controller)
DVD-ROM (master-secondary IDE controller)
DVD+-RW (slave-primary IDE controller)
Onboard sound

When I checked ATI's website, the only guidance was for Windows 95/98 users. Their suggestion was to check the IRQ and verify that no other device was using the same one. In my case, the video card uses IRQ 16, and was not sharing that IRQ with any other device. At this point, I don't know where to turn. Has anyone else had this same problem, and if so, how did you solve it? Any and all assistance will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

William Jones

[Apoptosis]

hello and welcome to the forums! There is a slight lag when MMC + TV Wonder USB is used. Try MMC switched to live mode to disable timeshifting. This will minimize any delay seen.

[whjones]

Thanks for your reply. I'm not talking about a delay, however. I like to record professional bicycle races, like the Paris-Robaix race, which was on OLN TV yesterday. I'm not sure what happened, but I don't have the first half hour of the broadcast. I opened up the TV app, changed to the correct channel, then hit the Record button just before the show came on. The record window shows how long it has been recording, and how much recording time is left. Everything is good so long as the time keeps ticking off, but I noticed that after 29 minutes and change, the timer stopped. I opened up the task manager and it indicated that the TV app had stopped responding. Unfortunately, nothing was actually recorded, although I didn't check any temp files. My question is what would cause the recording to simply stop? When I initially installed the ATI software, I didn't suffer any errors or problems, and there are no IRQ conflicts, so I'm stumped.

William Jones

[Illuminati]

William,

You are not going to find my post much help, except to assure you that you are not alone. I build my dad a small form factor machine with the AIW 9600 Pro... and he also experiences the same problem which you are describing.

My only advice is to try uninstalling all capturing programs or applications (including most DVD burning apps that offer on-the-fly dvd burning from video capture) and then reinstall only ATI's multimedia app for capturing. I did that once and it seemed to fix it, or at least extend the amount of time before crashing until we installed Nero Ultra (with NeroVision Express).

Let me know if this helps.

[whjones]

Illuminati,

Thanks for your reply. I failed to note that I use both Easy CD Creator 6 and Easy Media Creator 7 for burning to DVD/CD, although I always close Drag-to-Disk after logging in. You mentioned that the problem stopped after installing Nero, correct? I can go to the local Costco and purchase Nero. I have a couple of questions for you first, however. What OS (including service pack) are you running on your father's machine? Also, would the Microsoft antispyware app be likely to cause any problems with MMC?

Thanks in advance for your reply,

William Jones

[Illuminati]

Actually, Nero made it worse again... I mentioned that it was working better without any other DVD programs installed... and it went back to crashing often when I installed Nero...

So try uninstalling Easy Media Creator and reinstall the ATI drivers and multimedia software for the AIW 9600 Pro, and see if that helps.