RehabMan
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RehabMan
Here is an update. Got the new board yesterday. Same problem. CPU is now going back… New one already on its way. It has been a pain, but the good thing was I was planning to build two more systems based on the 2100t and may now go with the 620t for those machines.
Tried restoring BIOS settings with F9 in BIOS setup. Didn’t help. Also, my temps were great with the 3rd party HSF, and just OK with Intel’s. Don’t think it was heat related. Checked PS voltages and they looked OK (I have only an analog MM so I can’t verify that they are within tolerances, but this PS was working just fine with the old Clarkdale setup for a few weeks).
Talked with Intel tech today and they agreed it is probably the board. New one is already in process (provantage.com service is excellent so far).
I’m hopeful that the Windows hang on restart I experienced were just related to the (failing) board. So hopefully, I get a new board that just works. Holding on to the processor for now as Intel people say unlikely a bad CPU.
I restored my HTPC back to the Clarkdale setup and will do it all over when the new board gets here. Fun stuff.
Actually — it now looks like I’ve got a bad board or CPU. After passing a 2 hour Prime95 stress test, it won’t even boot from Windows 7 install media (tried both my USB stick and my DVD media). It crashes after loading Windows usually with different BSOD specifics each time.
I turned on boot tracing for troubleshooting the hang on restart issue, and most of the time it hung on amdxata.sys, a couple of times the next one (can’t remember what it was… fltmgr.sys?). Then I turned on FastBoot in the BIOS. That seemed to fix the problem on restart (strange eh?). But a few restarts later, it would no longer start from the SSD, and in addition would no longer start from any media.
I suspected bad RAM, but I tried swapping from another system and same result. Swapping RAM of course involved removing the HSF because of the way that Big Shuriken stands over top the RAM and makes it impossible to get at the RAM chips installed in the first two slots.
At this point I suspect I need to check my RMA options at provantage.com which is where the MB/CPU came from.
I’ll try to shoot an email to Ian about the mceBackup (restore) problem that I saw. Having never used the tool, it was probably something I did wrong or a misunderstanding on my part about how it is supposed to work.
One other thing I should mention for those of you thinking about SB. There is definitely some issues with HDMI and this chipset. I’m not sure what is going on at this point, but it seems that after a soft reset (ie. Start -> Restart from Windows), the system will hang trying to start Windows. It hangs even before the Win7 “flower animation.” Interestingly, I never saw it when I had it connected to an old Dell monitor via DVI-D (no HDCP, a Dell 1901FP, circa 2003) and I’ve never seen it happen on a cold boot. And I did a lot of soft resets in the process of setting it up (all those reboots after Windows updates and installing software). It wasn’t until I hooked it up to my HT that I started seeing it. In addition, it will generally work after failing by using the (hard) reset button (and answering “Start Windows Normally” at the “Windows failed to start last time” screen).
I’m planning to enable some boot trace output and see if I can figure which driver is causing it.
But let this be a word of warning. It seems maybe Intel is slipping on their quality, given the big SATA issue earlier this year and now all these HDMI issues, not to mention how long it has taken them to adress the 24p frame-rate issue mentioned in every review on this website.
Well… just as you guys stated, the in-place upgrade did not go well. I was hoping the hardware was similar enough, but obviously it wasn’t. The system booted and worked OK, but there were issues.
Although I was careful to uninstall drivers before doing the upgrade, I guess I didn’t uninstall enough. One problem area was Intel’s MEI. Once the upgrade was complete something wasn’t right with MEI and although I could uninstall it after the MB/CPU swap, I couldn’t get it to re-install correctly.
I didn’t spend much time messing with it, and after about an hour I just started over from scratch. I used mceBackup to restore the scheduled recordings, and of course backed up and restored my Recorded TV folder to/from a USB hard drive. mceBackup didn’t work for my channel lineups (it duplicated all the channels and cleared a bunch of the call signs), so I had to redo TV setup after deleting the guide database files… so I’ve got to spend some time in GuideTool fixing that up. Also, I’ve still got my channel logos to install and setup (might as well try version 2)… and there’s something screwy with the tweaking I had to do to the registry to make discrete on/off work correctly.
So… I’ve got a little bit of work yet before it is to the state I started, but it is close and working. And… with that 35w Core i3-2100T, Skythe Big Shuriken, and fanless power supply (Seasonic SS-400FL), my system finally acceptably quiet (my Samsung plasma TV now creates more noise than my HTPC). It also runs cooler than the old i3-530.
// Dean
I have full backup on my WHS, but are there any tools in particular that I should look at for backup/restore of series recordings, guide, etc? Is there software that might make a fresh install easier?
The problem with the newer drivers only manifests itself with the 6-series chipset. See this long thread on Intel’s forums for the details:
http://communities.intel.com/thread/20439?start=135&tstart=0
(at least Intel has been just now able to reproduce the bug, but who knows how long it will take for a fix to materialize). Not sure if the problem is specific to 64-bit or also happens on 32-bit, but I guess I’ll find out.
I plan to install 4GB — I just don’t see 64-bit as a big advantage until you have more than 4GB of RAM (64-bit programs are bigger, and use more memory while they run, so it is somewhat of a wash even though some of the memory above 3GB is not usable on 32-bit Win7). And then there is the pain of dealing with the “Program Files” vs. “Program Files (x86)”, 32-bit vs. 64-bit drivers/media filters/codecs. A 64-bit Win7 installation also has a much larger footprint than does 32-bit (a concern if you’re stuffing it onto a 60GB SSD).
I’ll probably still attempt to do without a clean install and just see what happens. I’d like to not be writing all that data (clean install, then updates, etc.) to my SSD as it certainly causes (perhaps unnecessary) wear and tear on the flash modules. If things seem unstable, then I can always fully inventory my software setup and re-do it (and there is a lot of tweaks just over the past year: channel logos, channel line-up editing, remote re-mapping, registry tweaks for discrete IR on/off, power profile, libraries & paths, SSD tweaking, tweaking to folder structure using junctions to move some system data off the SSD and onto the hard disk, the list goes on…)
I’m not even sure I could remember all the tweaks over the last year… although if I have to re-do it, I will certainly keep a notebook/log.
At any rate, we’ll certainly know more next week…
Home Group helps (in the Win7 shell), but I find the My Movies scanner usually screws something up if you leave it to autoscan — I seem to always end up with duplicate titles in the database and other oddities. As a result, I turn it off, and maintain the titles myself.
I see most people with large movie libraries (larger than a single hard disk) are resorting to multiple shares. I thought I’d share my (untested) plan…
I think what might work instead is to store the movies on the separate drives (no choice there), but then create a single share with symlinks to the individual movie folders. For example, say you have four movies on 3 different drives, e:MoviesMovie1, f:MoviesMovie2, f:MoviesMovie3, g:MoviesMovie4. You would then create a single share on d:Movies, with the following symlinks, d:MoviesMovie1 -> e:MoviesMovie1, d:MoviesMovie2 -> f:MoviesMovie2, d:MoviesMovie3 -> f:MoviesMovie3, d:MoviesMovie4 -> g:MoviesMovie4.
Then the d:Movies folder is shared out as a single share \ServerMovies (I plan to use the same computer name for my WHS 2011 server, which will mean I will not have to change anything in the MyMovies database).
Initially, I’ll create/maintain the symlink redirecting folder with a simple Powershell script, but may investigate writing a custom service that monitors the destination folders and adds/removes symlinks as necessary to keep everything in sync.
At this point, it is only an idea/plan, as I have not yet built my new WHS 2011 server. I’m going to use some parts (Core i3 + 1156 motherboard) from my HTPC as I plan to upgrade it to SandyBridge when I’m able to find the appropriate Intel motherboard for sale. The Intel “media” boards w/ integrated video seem to be in short supply at this point.
// Dean
I was thinking about the Gefen product as some others have also reported success with it.
Where do you place the HDMI Detective? I assume between the HTPC and the AVR?
I was thinking about the Gefen product as some others have also reported success with it.
Where do you place the HDMI Detective? I assume between the HTPC and the AVR?
Interesting… I tried that tool on my dual-monitor dev machine. Several times, I was able to get my main monitor (Dell U2410, DVI to DVI on ATI 5670) to stay black. The secondary monitor (Dell 1901FP, VGA to VGA on same ATI 5670) always came back up. For grins, I ran MonInfo on the secondary, so I could use it to see the EDID data when the main monitor was blank.
Interestingly, the EDID data for the blacked-out monitor was fine. All same as when the display wasn’t blank.
I have a couple of take-aways with this tool and/or this “black screen” problem:
– The “black screen” happens with diverse hardware. HTPC is Core i3 integrated Intel HD graphics to AVR to TV. My dev machine is ATI 5670 dual monitor DVI/VGA.
– Maybe it is HDCP related… My 1901FP is not HDCP aware (too old), where-as my U2410 is HDCP compliant.
– Still very intermittent. I had to try quite a few times to make the problem happen. I assigned hdmiOn.exe to a keyboard shortcut, just so I could run it quicky.
– It seems that since “black screen” happens with my dev machine using hdmiOn.exe to turn the displays off/then on again, I think it is likely it would not fix the problem I’m seeing at the HTPC.
– This seems more and more like some sort of Windows bug. Maybe it has been there a long time — there are reports of exactly the same bug happening as far back as XP Media Center.
– Even if hdmiOn.exe could help me, I was hard-pressed to find an event in Task Scheduler I could use to trigger it. Perhaps a custom app could monitor for changes in display status and trigger an event which would trigger the app.
More experimentation to come… when I have the time…
Interesting… I tried that tool on my dual-monitor dev machine. Several times, I was able to get my main monitor (Dell U2410, DVI to DVI on ATI 5670) to stay black. The secondary monitor (Dell 1901FP, VGA to VGA on same ATI 5670) always came back up. For grins, I ran MonInfo on the secondary, so I could use it to see the EDID data when the main monitor was blank.
Interestingly, the EDID data for the blacked-out monitor was fine. All same as when the display wasn’t blank.
I have a couple of take-aways with this tool and/or this “black screen” problem:
– The “black screen” happens with diverse hardware. HTPC is Core i3 integrated Intel HD graphics to AVR to TV. My dev machine is ATI 5670 dual monitor DVI/VGA.
– Maybe it is HDCP related… My 1901FP is not HDCP aware (too old), where-as my U2410 is HDCP compliant.
– Still very intermittent. I had to try quite a few times to make the problem happen. I assigned hdmiOn.exe to a keyboard shortcut, just so I could run it quicky.
– It seems that since “black screen” happens with my dev machine using hdmiOn.exe to turn the displays off/then on again, I think it is likely it would not fix the problem I’m seeing at the HTPC.
– This seems more and more like some sort of Windows bug. Maybe it has been there a long time — there are reports of exactly the same bug happening as far back as XP Media Center.
– Even if hdmiOn.exe could help me, I was hard-pressed to find an event in Task Scheduler I could use to trigger it. Perhaps a custom app could monitor for changes in display status and trigger an event which would trigger the app.
More experimentation to come… when I have the time…
Running latest drivers from Intel site for Core i3 Intel HD graphics. And yes.. no discrete video card (I tried an ATI 5570 that I have laying around, but two problems: 1) things got too hot w/ the fanless 5570 right next to the Ceton, and 2) 29/59 refresh rate bug on HBO content).
TV going from standby to on. Also same for AVR — standby to on. TV/AVR are on. HTPC was always on. Media Center running full screen, but all I see is black screen. I think if I move the mouse, I see the mouse pointer, but that’s it. Ctrl+Alt+Del, then see blue Ctrl+Alt+Del screen, then ESC to get back to full screen Media Center. Everything happy after that.
Very intermittent… only happens every other day or so.
Running latest drivers from Intel site for Core i3 Intel HD graphics. And yes.. no discrete video card (I tried an ATI 5570 that I have laying around, but two problems: 1) things got too hot w/ the fanless 5570 right next to the Ceton, and 2) 29/59 refresh rate bug on HBO content).
TV going from standby to on. Also same for AVR — standby to on. TV/AVR are on. HTPC was always on. Media Center running full screen, but all I see is black screen. I think if I move the mouse, I see the mouse pointer, but that’s it. Ctrl+Alt+Del, then see blue Ctrl+Alt+Del screen, then ESC to get back to full screen Media Center. Everything happy after that.
Very intermittent… only happens every other day or so.
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