Start Menu Vanishes After Watching Recorded TV

sparkanum · **7th June 2008, 04:51 PM**

Hey guys -

I recently installed an LG GGC-H20L Super Multi Blu-ray/HD-DVD and DVD Burner drive for my MCE2005 machine and an MSI NVidia NX8600GT video card to complement it. The HD drive works fine playing videos, and everything else seems to be working great - but I've run into a problem that is both hard to explain and extremely frustrating to deal with.

The problem occurs when watching recorded TV (and only recorded TV - not stored DivX videos or DVDs or anything else) - and happens when I attempt to go to the start menu of MCE. Here's where it gets hard to explain, so I'll give you a little story:

I'm watching recorded TV. I want to go into the start menu to maybe look at the guide or check if a show is recording. Normally, I'd hit the start button, and the following would happen:

- The video would shrink down into a little box in the left hand corner of the screen and keep playing,
- The menu would come up, and I could make my selections from the menu, and;
- Once finished, I could highlight the little box in the corner and return video to full screen.

However - more often than not, I instead have the following happen:

- The current video playing seems to freeze on screen,
- A box appears as it normally does in the lower left hand corner and continues playing, and as a result;
- I can't actually see anything going on with the menu (because the frozen video is stuck over the top of it).

The menu still works - as I can hear it flicking about if I click the up and down arrows on the remote. If I make the right combination of moves, I can even actually shut it down with the remote like normal, or return the video to full screen and continue playing.

Like I said - hard to explain, so if you need any clarification then let me know.

It started straight after I installed the new video card and burner drive (which meant I also installed the new PowerDVD software and video card/burner drivers as well). I'd been enjoying a flawless MCE experience for about a year and a half up till it started happening, so I can't imagine it would be anything other than the installation of the new parts / drivers / programs.

Since it started happening, I've tried:

- Reinstalling all the drivers and software
- Reinstalling my nVidia PureVideo Decoder (which made it occur less frequently)
- Uninstalling the nVidia PureVideo Decoder completely (which made it occur all the time, so I reinstalled it again)
- Updating to Service Pack 3
- Double checking all my drivers were up to date (I had to install a new driver for the video card, made no difference)

None of the above got rid of it, although as I stated reinstalling the PureVideo Decoders made the problem occur less frequently.

I'm in Canberra, and record both SD Digital and HD digital programs from all channels (and the problem can occur with both forms from any channel with any length episode). It can occur straight after starting a program, or even be working fine for a while and start randomly during watching (I know this from testing it).

I'm running XP MCE 2005 on a custom-built machine. I've run the HD compliance tests, and it passes the recommended specs for everything (except processor, but it was still above minimum for that).

If anyone has any ideas, I'm welcome to them.

Thanks in advance -

User: Sparkanum

nsvpl · **17th June 2008, 01:57 PM**

I had a very similar problem with the freeze frame and unable to navigate back to the main menu when I upgraded my media centre and installed a Sony Blue Ray reader and upgraded my video card to a Nvidia 9600GT. For a time I suspected the video card and tried various drivers. It even cut my link to my XBOX and I was unable to reconnect from the XBOX.

My Media Centre is Intel DG965WH MB with the disk configuration set to 'native' and 'RAID' in the bios setings. When I tried to load the Sony software for the blue ray my system crashed and went into boot loop mode. I figured there must be a hardware conflict for this to happen. So after a lot of trial and error and endless calls to Sony, I , by chance updated the SATA driver in device manager and now my Media Centre is back to normal.

I'm not sure whether this will fix your problem but it might be worthwhile downloading the latest drivers for your motherboard and update them through device manager.

best of luck
Gerry

andczo · **17th June 2008, 03:19 PM**

A couple of questions;
1/. Did you update windows with the most recent downloadable upgrades?
2/. I did the above and i have had the issue since then. i over came it by ensuring MST is running properly with all BIOS hacks on. I also run hibernator. If you do use this little gem of an application to control the power states on your machine, i foudn thatby allowing it to engage the first phase of power down i.e. allowing the windows screen saver to appear after 2 mins (user define); then pressing any key on the MCE remote, all is back to being OK. Hence this was the reason i double checked MST to ensure all the right boxes were checked.