doveman

In an attempt to to try and fix a problem I've been having with LiveTV in Mediaportal regularly freezing momentarily, which I was advised is most likely due to some device driver or other causing problems, I tried to uninstall the Logmein mirror driver first via Device Manager (I'd already uninstalled Logmein a while ago but it hadn't removed this). I also had a couple of virtual NICs for Virtualbox and VMware, which were disabled in Network Connections ('m using bridge mode for both, which doesn't use these virtual NICs), so I uninstalled those from Device Manager as well. After that, it was just BSOD on rebooting, even in Safe Mode, so I booted into my other Windows 7 and loaded the broken one's System Hive and deleted the leftover references to the Logmein drivers (and removed the driver files from system32\drivers) and also removed the references to the Virtualbox and VMware virtual NICs (but not the bridge drivers, which are listed as items under the real NIC, and which I need as I use Bridge mode). I also edited ControlSet002 but only removed the LogMeIn references from that. After that, ControlSet001 (default) still BSOD but thankfully ControlSet002 (LastKnownGood) now works. I wouldn't have thought removing the references to the Virtualbox and VMware virtual NIC drivers, thus preventing them from loading, should cause it to BSOD on booting, but that does seem to be the case. Removing the Logmein mirror driver hasn't helped with the Mediaportal problem anyway, so I still need to find the proper way to remove the virtual NIC drivers to see if they're causing it. I guess I can just try exporting the entries from ControlSet002 and import them back into ControlSet001 for now, which should hopefully stop the latter BSOD on booting and then try and remove them again from the default (not by deleting them manually from the registry though, as that obviously doesn't work!), so at least I'll have a working ControlSet002 to fall back on. Perhaps I'll just uninstall VMware and Virtualbox, which should be safe and then I can check whether that's fixed the problem and if not move on to uninstalling some other drivers.

TV playback kept freezing momentarily tonight, so switching to High Performance hasn't helped. I tried moving the timeshifting files from RAMdisk to HDD as well and that didn't help either. I've uploaded another capture after a couple of glitches if you could check that for me to see if it looks any different http://www.mediafire.com/?sn666c6taoo633e

I can't really say the High Performance mode is better yet. I'll leave it in that mode and monitor for glitches for a couple of days, but MediaPortal is still showing continuity errors in it's logs, so if those are being caused by the DPC issues (and you say the .etl capture looks much the same) then High Performance hasn't fixed that. I'll ask in the Mediaportal forum if they know why it's doing this. Can you expand a bit on the problem so I can describe it better to them (i.e. what you mean by it causing DPC/ISR issues)? Task Manager shows Mediaportal using 8-14% CPU whilst watching TV by the way, so it's not completely idle.

I'm the opposite, I always want to just go to standby and only use the hibernate file if there's a powercut, so I disable the Hibernation timeout but leave Hybrid enabled, I guess I'll just do without Hybrid then. Thanks for trying to help anyway.

Hi I made a capture just after seeing a major glitch in Mediaportal earlier, which I've uploaded to http://www.mediafire.com/?cxaguv6ggvcm9du Considering what you said about the power management driver, I then switched the Power profile to High Performance and made another capture with Mediaportal running. I didn't notice any glitches during this time but they tend to occur randomly anyway. You can download this capture from http://www.mediafire.com/?a28ys3o2rol9m88 Both captures were made whilst I was watching Ch4 News. Strangely, only with this programme and no others on Ch4 or any other channel, I get constant audio popping and crackling throughout (every night. When I first noticed it I thought they must be having some trouble with their equipment but it's clear now that the problem must be at my end). No one on the Mediaportal forum has suggested an explanation for this, but I doubt it's related to DPC latency, as that wouldn't affect only one programme. Oh, I checked the BIOS and it is the latest. The board is a Biostar TA790GXBE with BIOS 78DGA705 http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/introduction.php?S_ID=419

Now me (reversing Machines)... You already have Shares defined, just Map them.Yeah, that's what I've already been doing, which I think is obvious from my previous posts (even the first one). Not that I can see. Not really. Ticking the box to enable Integration Features doesn't share the drives. They have to also be ticked for that to happen. I think they're separate issues. Installing an app in the XP Mode VM (as All Users) makes it appear in the Win7 Host's Start Menu (under the Virtual PC folder) but the app is installed on the Guest's HDD C: partition and doesn't depend on any of the Host's partitions being shared in the guest, so I can't see any good reason why they removed the ability to share individual folders. I've read posts elsewhere stating that folders shared natively in Windows 7 were much slower to access in the guest than folders shared by Virtual PC. In fact you said in post #2 "Directly Sharing the Folders (NOT via "Shared Folders") it runs just fine! Notice that "Shared Folders" is DEFINITELY slower (goes through an interface)"!

I've changed the title of the thread to better reflect the problem, now that I've confirmed that standby works fine, just not when Hybrid is enabled.

Thanks but link#1 just describes how to share a folder in the XP guest/VM and then map it to a drive in Windows 7. Any folders I share using Windows 7 do appear in the XP guest under Network Neighbourhood (providing I'm using Bridged mode, not NAT) and I can map them to drives from Explorer's Tools menu. Link #2 is a bit misleading, as the Host's partitions only appear in the XP guest if they're ticked under Integration Features in the Virtual PC settings for the guest. I'm not sure what C: appears as in the Guest if it's ticked, because obviously the XP guest already has a C:. I've only got my (virtual) DVD drive V: ticked currently, as I don't want to share the entire partitions of my Host's hard drive and that does appear as V: in the guest. I've noticed that My Documents in the XP guest is automatically redirected to the Host's My Documents folder though, without the user needing to do anything. From what it says there "Your physical machine's hard drives are already mapped, which is different from how Virtual PC 2007 works. Because the drives are already mapped, there isn't an option to create Shared Folders like Virtual PC 2007 requires you to do." it seems unlikely I'm going to be able to share individual folders with Windows Virtual PC, which is a shame. As I said, I can still do so by sharing them with Windows 7, but I get the impression there are some performance problems doing it this way that aren't present when sharing folders with Virtual PC (2007).

Thanks. Yeah, seems to be OK now. I'll investigate to see if there's a way to use VPC to share individual folders rather than entire partitions as that might perform better though. Can't imagine why they thought it a good idea to remove that feature from Windows Virtual PC though, especially considering both the main alternatives offer it.

I've just tested Internet access again in (what appears to be) Bridged mode (pointing directly to the real NIC) and it seems to be working at normal speeds now and I have access to Windows 7 shared folders in the VM in that mode as well. It would be better if I could share them directly with VirtualPC as you suggest, but unfortunately that doesn't seem possible with the current version of VirtualPC.

Yep, sorry , typo , I meant 0C, you cannot have 06 or 0E, unless you make smaller partitions. jaclaz No worries, thanks for the quick reply. I'll get a chance to try that later hopefully

Good point, I didn't consider that. I will disable Undo Disks when I've finished the initial setting up. I think so. I don't know if Virtual PC is using a Hibernate/Save State file inside the VM or externally though. That doesn't SEEM to be how it works here. Virtualbox and VMWare Player have the following adapters attached to my NIC card "VMWare Bridge Protocol" "Virtualbox Bridged Networking Driver" and they facilitate Bridged mode. VirtualPC has "Virtual PC Network Filter Driver" so I imagine that does the same. I'm testing all three, but my questions here are about Virtual PC. In Virtual PC, under Integration Features it only appears to allow me to share an entire partition and doesn't allow for setting a Drive Letter to map it to in the VM, hence why I resorted to sharing them in the Host and mapping them manually in the VM. However, now I've swtiched the Networking Mode, from whatever it was when pointed directly at the card, to NAT (the only other options are Internal Network and Not Connected), the shared folders are no longer accessible in the VM. The VM has an ip of 192.168.131.65 whilst the Host is 192.168.1.62 so that would explain why, but I don't know of a way to change the VM to use the same range as the Host whilst in NAT mode. Yes I use a Router (does anyone not these days?) which has three PCs connected to it, which either use Static or Dynamic IP addresses on the 192.168.1.x range. When I set VirtualPC's Networking Mode to point directly at the real NIC, it did use an IP address in that range, hence why Windows Networking/Shared Folders was working but then the Internet speed was appalling. As I say, I can't use Virtual PC's Integration Features/Shared Folders as it only allows me to share an entire partition, which I don't want to do. As I mentioned, I use Bridged mode in Virtualbox and VMware which works fine in terms of Internet speed and also allow me to access the Shared Folders (shared using Windows 7). They both also allow me to specify individuals folders to be accessible in the VM and VMWare Player has a tickbox "Map as a network drive in Windows Guests" but doesn't allow for specifying which drive it should be mapped as. From what you've said, it seems your version of VirtualPC also allows sharing individual folders as well as specifying which drive they should be mapped to in the VM, but this doesn't appear to be possible with the version of VirtualPC I have.

Hmm, I was just looking at BootICE and according to that 0E is FAT16 LBA and 0C is FAT32 LBA so I'm not sure which you meant me to try, but as it's currently FAT32 (0B) I guess it makes sense to try FAT32 LBA (0C) first and after that I'll try FAT16 LBA (0E).

OK, I tested sending it into Hibernate manually last night and that worked fine (as did the resume this morning).

Thanks for that. I'll try and note what time I start xperf in future then, although perhaps that won't help if it resets the timer when looping the buffer. I use the Balanced profile, normally set to standby after 30 minutes, with the additional "Allow Sleep with Remote Opens" tweak (I'm sure I've probably adjusted some of the other options from default as well though). I'm pretty sure I'm on the latest BIOS but I'll double-check that. I'll do another capture with the latency+POWER command you've posted, thanks.

It seems there's a bit of confusion here. I asked "So is there anything else we can do to work out why it doesn't work with Hybrid enabled " and your reply just explains how, when using Hybrid mode, it writes the hibernation file at the beginning of standby, which I thought my post #9 showed I already knew, but perhaps it wasn't clear. I'll check whether manual Hibernation works then. In the past when I've had problems with standby or hibernate not working automatically, I've always found them to work when triggered manually so I expect it to work but I'll check to be sure.

eh? I know that. Not sure what you're trying to tell me there.

I'm not using "Hibernation in the Guest", I'm using the Virtual PC "Close" button which is set to Hibernate. I don't know if that can be disabled but if I did I'd have to cold boot everytime which takes 60+ seconds, rather than 14 seconds to resume from standby, so I don't know why you're suggesting that I don't use Hibernate. I had it pointing to my REAL network card when I had the problems, which as far as I can tell puts it in Bridge Mode. It's only since changing it to NAT mode that Internet access has started working at normal speeds. I am Directly Sharing my folders as I said and they were accessible and mapped when I was pointing to my REAL network card (but then Internet access didn't work properly). I haven't changed the folder sharing but since changing to NAT the shared folders are no longer visible to be mapped.

I was using Bridged as that's always worked best for me in Virtualbox and VMware but I've switched it back to NAT (the default) now and it's running at normal speed, however it's made my mapped drives disappear and if I look under Windows Network there's nothing there. If I type \\tsclient it just shows my shared Virtual Drive V: (which is shared by Virtual PC's Integration Features) but I need to be able to map two folders from the host D:\Data\Main and D:\Downloads to the VM's D: and E: I think I was Directly Sharing the folders before as I'd just set them to Shared in Windows 7, not using Virtual PC, but as I say they're not accessible now I've switched from bridged to NAT, so do you know how I can fix this? On another point, the Undo Disks seem to get ridiculously large, like 300MB every time I boot. I'm pretty sure XP doesn't write 300MB on every boot! It also seems to take far too long to start the VM, about 60 seconds showing "Starting the Virtual Machine" before changing to "Starting Integration Features" which takes about 6 seconds after which I see XP go through the logon sequence. From Hibernation it's only about 14 seconds but in comparison Virtualbox only takes about 30 seconds to cold boot to the start of the XP logon sequence and VMWare Player about 23 seconds.

Hi MagicAndre I caught a glitch tonight with xperf running and have uploaded the zipped .etl to http://www.mediafire.com/?i0joanlus1y4z2i if you'd be good enough to take a look for me. The Mediaportal logs show continuity errors at 21:03:50, so if the .etl contains timestamps hopefully that will help you locate the problem.

OK, it seems to work with Hybrid disabled. So is there anything else we can do to work out why it doesn't work with Hybrid enabled (i.e. when it's writing to the Hibernate file on standby)?

I'm using XP Mode with the NIC in bridged mode. If I try and download Avira Antivir, it goes at about 30-50KB/s in the VM, but if I download the same file in the Windows 7 host it goes at 1.98MB/s. I'm downloading to a shared folder on the Host (D:\Downloads) which is mapped to E: in the VM, although that's not the problem as it takes ages to even start downloading and goes just as slow if I save it to the VM C: partition. On the Host NIC I've set TCP and UDP checksum offloading to disabled, as advised elsewhere to fix problems with shared folders. There's an additional "IPv4 Checksum Offload" setting which I've left on "Rx and Tx Enabled"

I'll certainly test it to see, although I only want to use Hibernate for the Hybrid function (i.e. restore in the event of a power-cut) so if it's necessary to disable Hybrid I might as well just disable Hibernate completely. EDIT: Hmm, I don't know if this is normal or could be the cause of the problem, but when I look at the Security tab for hiberfil.sys it shows "The requested security information is either unavailable or can't be displayed". Mind you it says the same on my other system, although I don't use standby or hibernate on there much (other than manual standby) so there could be a problem with that as well for all I know! I am logged in with an Administrator account on both systems.

I've been testing today with hibernate disabled (powercfg -h off) and Standby seems to work OK like that (I'll give it a couple of days to be sure though). I previously found that Standby doesn't work with hibernate enabled if the C: partition isn't marked Active, due to some internal Windows requirement for the partition holding the hibernate file to be the Active one, but this isn't the problem now as the C: partition is marked Active. Anyway, with that problem Standby never worked, whereas now it's an intermittent problem.

I've never found it much use in the past and I can't see anything obvious in it now but I've attached the powercfg -energy report in case something stands out that I'm overlooking. energy-report.html