Upgraded HTPC build adventures

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If anyone’s interested, here’s the latest chapter in my HTPC saga.  Since my last post I have replaced the motherboard with an Intel DH55HC ATX  and 8GB of Crucial memory.  I have replaced the CPU with an Intel CORE i3-550. I replaced the main hard drive containing the OS with a Crucial 60GB SSD. I also replaced the PSU with a Corsair 550W model I had onhand.

Symptoms:  The HTPC would record with no problems, mainly because there’s very little load on the CPU for this process (it’s just dumping the data stream from the tuner to the hard drive).  If I tried watching TV or use an extender, it would reboot without warning or display a BSOD with a variety of errors. This would happen quite often, much to the chagrin of the spouse and family members wanting to use the extender in the family room. 

Attempted fixes:  This has been going on for a while now, which is what prompted me to swap out all of the hardware.  I rolled back the Ceton drivers to version 17 and it seemed to help, but even that was short-lived.  After installing the new CPU, the PC refused to boot.  The display would hang and never display the prompts to enter BIOS setup.  I reflashed the BIOS several times using the emergency recovery method and it would appear to work initially but would hang on any subsequent reboot. 

I finally decided to play it smart and disconnect everything from the HTPC except for a barebones setup (motherboard, memory, CPU, PSU, keyboard, mouse, boot drive, and monitor).  The system booted up fine with this setup so I’d shut it down, add the 2nd drive and boot it again.  Still no problems so I added the DVD-ROM.  Still no problem so I connected the ethernet cable and it hung on bootup.  Seriously!  A stinking ethernet cable was giving me such a headache?  I replaced the cable and everything continued to function normally.

One thing I had not done was try a different set of drivers for my HP USB tuners so I installed an older set I still had.  I had previously uninstalled all four tuners from Device Manager (all Analog, Audio, and Digital entries in the list).  Everything seemed to be going fine until I got another BSOD.  This time I noticed the name of the file that was causing the problem.  It was one of the drivers I just installed for the HP tuners.  FYI – The driver is the same as that used for the Hauppauge HVR-950Q.  I uninstalled the drivers and removed the tuners from the system.  I had a pair of Hauppauge HVR-2250’s that weren’t being used so I installed them and repeated Media Center setup.

For the icing on the cake, I got the dreaded PlayReady update failure when trying to reconfigure Media Center with the new tuners.  I jumped through all the hoops with every workaround I could find, but still no luck. 

I decided to bite the bullet and reinstall everything from scratch.  So far, everything seems to be running smoothly.  I’d like to reinstall the i5-660 CPU, buit I’m almost afraid to touch it at this point.

The main point of the story is, before you start replacing hardware, strip the system down to the bare essentials and reinstall everything one piece at a time until it breaks.

[RocKKer]

I think your on the right track, however I would not re-install everything I would test the components.

That means for:

HDD – run the manufacturers diagnostics (“quick” test, “extended” test, write zeroes) followed by HDTune/errorscan – look for slow or bad sectors. Write zeros again if there are any, repeat HDTune/errorscan. Hopefully all slow/bad sectors got re-allocated by the write zeroes function.

Memory (memtest386+ run it for 24hours) – if there are any errors remove all but one memory stick and test for 24 hours. Repeat this test one at a time until the bad one is found (each test should be allowed to run 24 hours to prove good).

CPU/Memory – run IntelBurn test 2.50 by AgentGOD – runs Intel Linpack under the covers and stresses both CPU and memory. Run for 24 hours.

For an added test rip a blu-ray and reencode it (handbrake or BR-Rebuilder, etc.) – I have had some system complete all the tests above only to find that these re-encoders cause the system to show it’s instability.

If you get good results on all these test you can be relatively assured that your hardware is fine.

Yes it takes a long time to complete, but it’s worth it in my book. It also may weed out early failures of the other components that your not specifcally testing.

[Author]

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