XBOX 360 extender off VMC freezing regularly - suggestions?

[bodogbodog]

I use my XBOX360 as a media extender off Vista Ultimate (wired connection) and it is freezing regularly

The situation is interesting though as it freezes after a varying period of time, often after a couple of minutes of starting to play a recording (although sometimes it will go for an hour before freezing) and after the freeze occurs about a minute later it reports that it's lost connection with VMC, when I get it to reconnect it reconnects to the VMC dashboard (once in a while it offers a resume option when I go to the recording I was watching (not always though) - then after reconnecting after the initial freeze it will run all night without a further freeze (I can't recall a situation where its frozen twice in one night after rebooting the XBOX 360

The XBOX 360 freeze does not impact the VMC which keeps on running

The wired ethernet network is on a 10/100 speed network - so I am thinking of upgrading it to go through a gigabit switch - that may help to keep feeding the file to the XBOX 360

Does anyone understand how the XBOX 360 extender works - does it buffer the data it's streaming - I'm thinking that it may be freezing after the buffer fills - or something is happening on the network that means the data isn't streaming fast enough to keep it full

Overall WAF is suffering - although she knows she couldn't exist with VMC so put's up with it

Any ideas / suggestions for troubleshooting this issue?

[arangan]

I also had this issue. I'm not sure its due to the same reason as yours.

(I'm using cheap 10/100 switch)

my one came to the picture after automatic update of the network driver. I re-installed Vista and disable automatic installation of updates. Now I select which one get updated (I ignored network driver update). after that every thing is back to normal.

[purezerg]

I had that problem once. everything in the house is gigabit and all wires are cat6. only xbox360 is 100mbps.
i disabled IPv6 on all vista systems. from then onwards the xbox seems working fine. it's only the starting that might hiccup when the MCE is still waking up. yap everytime you on your xbox, the xbox sends out a WakeOnLan to the MCE.

[Auldar]

I had this problem too. For me, it was caused by the drivers of the on-board ethernet port pegging the CPU at 100%.

I fixed it by going into device manager on Vista, and uninstalling both of the ethernet drivers listed. Vista immediately added the drivers back, but now they were working properly.

Hope this is your problem, because it's very easy to fix

[djos]

Make sure you have QOS enabled on your VMC box too, I found all sorts of issues when I turned it off.

[tsf]

Just wondering for those that had this problem if you where running SP1 on your systems.

I have just started to have this problem after installing SP1, uninstall SP1 restart and all is OK. So wondering if its releated.

Andrew

[bodogbodog]

Originally Posted by tsf

Just wondering for those that had this problem if you where running SP1 on your systems.

No - and I'm still experiencing this issue periodically (not all the time)
I'm not running SP1 on my VMC - I've held off due "upgrading" as it's running fine apart from this problem

[bodogbodog]

Originally Posted by bodogbodog

I've held off due "upgrading" as it's running fine apart from this problem

Oh please please let this Vista update be the answer - Windows update has installed it on my VMC - so I will keep my fingers crossed and post back soon as to whether or not it's worked

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/950125

Issues that are resolved by this update
This update addresses the following issues. These issues occur when you use Media Center on an Xbox 360 console.
• This update addresses a picture quality issue that occurs when you use Media Center Extender on an Xbox 360 console that has a High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) connector to the TV for video and a Sony/Philips Digital Interface Format (S/PDIF) connection to the audio device for audio.
• This update addresses an issue in which the Media Center Extender stops responding (hangs) when you play a large non-WMV video over an HTTP session.
• This update provides support for 50Hz output together with better quality for HD models. This feature applies primarily to regions that use the PAL video standard.

[helpware]

Since the start of July I've been getting Video freezes if I use the Skip or FFWD controls. The Audio track plays fine but the Video freezes on a frame.

I uninstalled all updates installed over the last few weeks. Still problems.

The 500GB TV Drive was full. Never worried Vista MC in the past (self manages usually). This time I manually deleted several movies and the video problem was fixed.

Installed all MS Patches again. The problem returned.

Uninstalled just the patches relating to MC -- KB950125 + KB950126
Now works find and family are happy again.

We rang MS Support who reported the problem. So at the moment I dare not install a MS patches. Like all these things I assume MS will push out yet another patch to fix that patch that broke the video.

Rob

[Auldar]

I've started seeing the video corrupting on HD channels now when extending.. Only a few times in a 2 hour recording, but not ideal.. I'll try removing KB950126, but I really want to keep the 50hz support from KB950125.. I hope that's not the problem..