PowerDVD8 disappearing after 6-7 hours

[XxDeadlyxX]

I'm using PowerDVD8 latest build with HD-DVD hack. I have eVGA 750i, Q6600, 8GB ram, Thermaltake 1200W PSU, 2x GTX 280s and X-Fi Titanium, Vista 64.

Last night while watching Knocked Up HD-DVD, PC froze in the middle of watching it (with audio skipping after freeze). I figured this is because of my overclock (Q6600 at 3.15GHz and 1800 FSB, stable in benchmarks).

When my comp is playing Blu-rays/HD-DVDs though, I rarely get above 10% CPU usage, so you'd hardly think that watching them would tax the comp. I've played hours and hours of games including Crysis and UT3 with no problems.

I put my comp back to stock settings to test. However, PowerDVD is giving me really unusual behavior when I play I, Robot still. I let I, Robot play overnight, by the morning PowerDVD had completely disappeared, no error messages nothing. At 6am I woke up and checked it and it was still playing at the menu after the movie had finished. However by 10am PowerDVD had vanished. I let it play during the day as well today, and the same thing happened after about 6-7 hours. Unfortunately I was not at the PC when it disappeared.

I'm guessing this behavior is not normal? From what I can see, the disc should keep repeating on the menu which has 100 chapters, then repeats starting on Chapter 2. It should do this indefinitely.

I think it may have to do with Nvidia driver 180.43, I've reverted back to 178.24. I'm dumbfounded as to what could cause it though, this is the weirdest behavior I've ever seen, you'd think it would at least have an error message or something... :/

Any ideas?

[Adbear]

Did you check the temp on the graphics cards just in case they're overheating when it offloads on to them?

[XxDeadlyxX]

GPU1 does get warm when playing movies... often above 70c, but other things like Crysis and Furmark can push them over 80c easily with no problem.

[Roger O]

Can you say virus. Anytime somone starts to loose apps ETC this can be caused by a virus. Yes it can be casued by bad RAM or a defective hard drive as well. - First try a mem test with memtest 86. Takes about 1 hour per GIG to test. The run a full CHKDSK /r on drive C: with XP boot CD recovery console to make sure you don't have and bad clusters. I would still scan for virus's and spyware ETC. Remove the virus scan you have and install somthing like FreeAVG it's fantastic. Then download and run spybot 1.6 and Mailwarebytes and scan your system with both but not at the same time.

Good luck

[damnskippy]

I am betting it has something to do with PDVD, drivers & SLI somehow not getting along. 70c is a little warm but like you said gaming gets them hotter.

How long had it PDVD been running when it locked up playing Knocked Up? Seems like it will run for a good while before crapping out. Have a look at the processes and see if something is slowly building till it hits a critical point and kills PDVD.

Sounds like you were watching from the disk, if so try watching from an ISO, if not try from the disk.

I have a system with the same sound card running Vista 32bit and one with an X-Fi gamer running Vista 64bit and a GTX 280. That's about the only hardware similar (P45, C2D 8500 @ 3.8GHz) I have not had any problems with either system. I am betting you have the latest release of the drivers but you might check. Also I do not have anything other than the drivers and the little sound control task bar thing installed.

[XxDeadlyxX]

It's definitely not virus-related, because it was happening before I wiped my system a few days ago, and I always use Comodo firewall and AVG.

Knocked up froze about half-way through. I watched 40-year old Virgin and Man on Fire two days before though with no problem, so it is kinda random.

I let I, Robot run again last night and this time it froze at about 5am... so it makes me think that the freezing and PDVD disappearing are connected... I'm betting it's my memory causing it.

I was wrong about my 280s causing it, I changed back to 178.24 before last night and put my graphics overclock from 630mhz back to 600mhz stock, and it still froze last night, so it's not a graphics thing. Nvidia drivers also automatically set PowerDVD8.exe to only use 'Single GPU', so it doesn't use SLI.

Next thing I'll try is loosening timings from 5-5-5-15 to 6-6-6-18, and/or removing 2 sticks etc.

[XxDeadlyxX]

Ok this is interesting... I removed my sound card, one GTX 280, and 3 of my memory sticks and reset mobo to default. I let I Robot play overnight and it's still playing (over 10 hours). That must mean the freezing is related to the disappearing, as it didn't disappear.

So now I need to figure out which of those is causing it.

What I did notice... with only one GTX 280, its temp when playing I Robot is WAY lower, only 55-56c. I've just put the other 280 and sound card back in (but left the 3 sticks out), and set I Robot to play again, and GPU1 is up to 73c.

My case is an Antec 1200 so I would think my cooling is sufficient...

[damnskippy]

Cooling may come into play when you add the second card because now you have two of them making heat. But that is quite a bit of difference especially if the second card is essentially idle.

Should have added one thing back at a time now if it crashes it could be two things :)

keep us posted, I am curious.

[XxDeadlyxX]

Cooling may come into play when you add the second card because now you have two of them making heat. But that is quite a bit of difference especially if the second card is essentially idle.

Should have added one thing back at a time now if it crashes it could be two things :)

keep us posted, I am curious.

Yeh I know I should have... but at 6-7 hours a pop it is a lot of time wasted heh. Plus I'm suspecting the memory too, so in a way I'm trying to pinpoint the memory as the cause.

I mean I've had the two cards both running at over 80c playing games for hours and hours, no problems at all... so it would be very weird that only ~70-75c during movies (just on the first card, second card is about 60c) would cause problems.

Will report back with results later.

[XxDeadlyxX]

Well with the two 280s, X-Fi and one memory stick in and BIOS at default it just went for 9-10 hrs no problem. So it's definitely related to having 4 sticks of ram in.

I've increased my SPP (northbridge) to 1.55v which is its max, now I'll see how 4 sticks go.

[damnskippy]

Bummer, I hate having to hit max voltage on anything. Strange that decreasing the timings did not help, makes me think a bad stick is in the mix. Try running memtest.