Windows XP MCE sluggish performance

BiGBrOwNPimpsta · Jul 10, 2006, 01:07 PM

I cannot find out what the hell is causing me these problems, most everything was fine before. I didnt even install anything to cause it.

About 2 months ago I purchased a tv wonder elite, that was a bitch get working but it was fine. so i decided switch over to MCE2005. after purchasing a new hard drive, because my old one died I installed it. After installing this S-ATA hard drive, I started getting a lot of static if the CPU was put under load. Reinstalling the audigy drivers do pretty much nothing. Then about 2 weeks ago i switched from watching a movie on my computer through media center to Live TV. this crashed the system and I reset. Live TV from then on kept crashing or was very choppy. So I reformatted again, this time Live TV worked but after 5-10 mins it starts getting very choppy to unwatchable framerates. It takes me about 3-5 mins to get task manager to close media center. In addition, gaming performance has gone down dramatically to about 5 fps a second in CS Source, it was also acting up a bit in splinter cell chaos theory sometimes. I can clearly feel its a CPU usage issue.

After going through lots of tweaking of windows, media center and my video card I haven't been able to find a solution. Using the k-lite codec pack makes it worse when playing videos in windows media player. I can only narrow it down to possibly faulty RAM or faulty CPU. I will probably test the ram today, I just hate that I have to test the modules seperately and can take a hell of a lot of time.

any solutions guys?

edit - look at the CPU usage graph this is maybe after 8 minutes of Live TV being on.

BiGBrOwNPimpsta · Jul 10, 2006, 10:30 PM

well i did vigorous memory testing and got interesting results with windows memory tester

in dual channel, i got 1 error after about 4 tests. in single channel i tried both modules for about 2 hrs each and got no errors. as far as RAM goes im stumped

edit - well I did some more testing, watched tv with 512mb of ram on media center and it was completely fine for 20 mins. cs source though was pretty choppy. although it reached top framerates it wasnt consistent but it was fairly playable if i prolly brought down the settings.

so im narrowing it down to RAM... i will do some further testing with Live TV and the other module to see where this issue might be at. its pretty annoying, if i need ram im just going to upgrade to 2 gb

Rasta Monsta · Jul 11, 2006, 12:19 AM

Check your GPU and CPU temps...MCE will run them up big time while rendering video (TV or DVD). Good thermals are more important to MCE than regular Windows...got a dusty heatsink?

rasta

BiGBrOwNPimpsta · Jul 11, 2006, 12:21 AM

indeed i do, just to clean it out has been a bitch after moving into this condo. everything is brand new i dont wanna do it inside gotta wait for the weather to get good and do it on my balcony (which im not technically allowed either). i have to buy compressed air as well and put on more thermal paste.

i think its the ram, nothing resets and my GPU temps look fine but the card is pretty dusty

Rasta Monsta · Jul 11, 2006, 01:21 PM

Is PAT enabled on that i865? How is your NB heatsink/fan? You might want to try without PAT and see what you get. . .

BiGBrOwNPimpsta · Jul 11, 2006, 02:45 PM

yea i tried with/without PAT. its been fine for years with PAT. the system is dusty, but it seems like something wrong with the s-ata controller rather than heating or stability. i also experienced lots of static and popping from the sound card after installing the s-ata drive. it starts popping when the CPU goes under a larger amount of load (such as loading my mp3 folder, browsing through stuff in media center). before it would just pause if the cpu was under too much load which is normal.

Rasta Monsta · Jul 11, 2006, 02:48 PM

Hmm almost sounds like a PCI latency issue. . .are there settings for that in BIOS (and, I am sure you have latest Intel drivers)?

mtsaint · Sep 2, 2006, 04:34 AM

my pc camed with media center pre-installed i have yet to figure out a way to uninstall it. I as well had frezzing choppiness and excrutiatingly long shut down times when a program froze. I solved my problem by buying more ram and msconfig to montior which programs where active. at one point i was so fed up with media center i simply took out my tv tuner and forgot abotu it awhile. then months later reinstalled the tv tuner and Current DRIVERS been good since

BiGBrOwNPimpsta · Sep 2, 2006, 07:31 PM

no ive figured it out there was a lot of problems.

1. broken HDD
2. MCE rollup update wouldnt install properly since i forced it.

all is fine now, but i do want to install rollup 2. it just wont let me install. i found a solution online to extract it and install it file by file. but it still crashed my MCE and this is why i created this thread. so how can i get it to install? basically it says it cannot install due to another update. i will get more details in a bit for you guys

mtsaint · Sep 2, 2006, 08:17 PM

i had a similar problem after editing my registry i had to run my windows repair disk