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So I've got a weird little issue. I've got an HTPC built with Win7 Home. I run a Hauppaugge WinTV 2250 (dual tuner) running through WMC. It runs flawlessly, but for one time period... every Sunday from 7pm Mountain until 9pm. What happens is that shows that are recorded get pixelated and cuts out throughout the programs. Here is how things are set up:

C: is a 256MB WD Blue for OS only
D: is a 2 GiB WD Green for DVR only
E: is a 3 GiB WD Green for backup/playback of my personal movies, home movies, music, etc.
4 Gib of RAM
Core i3-2120T

Now, I know its a tuner issue because I will can go to other TV's throughout the house and the picture is perfect. However, the entire HTPC interface is sluggish.

Playback of recorded movies is flawless, but recorded on the DVR is choppy.

Hard Drive usage is normal, no peaks or thrashing.

Memory usage of WMC is approaching 700MB and increases.

I've tried to see if there is some sort of scheduled event, but I can't find anything. However, if I restart the system, everything works well.

Advice? And I won't be going to XBMC or anything. My wife has learned WMC, and it will be staying forever.

Don't know what the issue is unfortunately but I think you confused GB with TB. I'm pretty sure you have 2TB and 3TB drives, not 2GB and 3GB respectively. Those wouldn't last very long for recording. A 256MB hard disk wouldn't hold Microsoft Office let alone W7.

Well, I guess at least I'm no longer confusing them as kb and mb.....

To troubleshoot, restart your computer just before this usually happens, so at 6:30MST. This will make sure it's not a resource issue, like ram. If it happens again, I'd say all signs point to some sort of scheduled operation (even though you couldn't find anything). Windows update maybe? What's your processor?

7 PM Sunday? That sounds like the default backup time for Windows 7. For some reason the backup process doesn't show up as disk activity but it definitely can cause issues with applications that require quick HDD access.

That's what mine defaulted to anyway...

Waco wrote:

7 PM Sunday? That sounds like the default backup time for Windows 7. For some reason the backup process doesn't show up as disk activity but it definitely can cause issues with applications that require quick HDD access.

That's what mine defaulted to anyway...

I think that was it. Will find out tonight but the time was spot on. Changed it to 3am on Monday.

Worked perfectly! Thanks much for the help.

Sometimes it's the simplest things.