ICU2008

Hello everyone: As my first post, I would like to describe a problem I am having. We've built 3 pretty impressive servers for a client, with hotswappable drives and power supplies, etc, and - at the client's request - made the OS Windows Server 2003, and GeoVision's 2008 video capture card. To accomodate the audio, we're adding a Siig sound card which plays happily (allegedly) with Server2003 (if anyone has any advice on use of a sound card with Win2003, I'd also be interested). The problem is that we're getting the Blue Screen of Death virtually every time we attempt to click the GeoVision icon (we've taken GeoVision out of the startup menu, as the system was crashing immediately). Each of the three servers has done this intermittently, though there appears to be no rhyme or reason - we've attempted installing in various orders the drivers, then the card; leaving it off the startup menu, and back on...etc. Each server has at one time or another allowed GeoVision to run - and that's great - but they don't reliably allow GeoVision to boot up upon request. The Blue Screen of Death (BSD) isn't very helpful: the message merely reads "Hardware failure, please consult your hardware provider". Any ideas? Has anyone attempted to run the 2008 cards on a full blown server before? Is there an I/O conflict? ICQ? Haaalllppp! Thanks!

In further discussions with GeoVision, it has come to our attention that GeoVision has never tested their card on a server grade machine. So: the fact that GeoVision advertises that their cards are compatible with Windows Server 2003, that isn't enough. All three servers we have are up and running. It appears as though this is a startup/driver conflict, and we haven't found exactly what yet. Once a server is up, though - it's up, so I'm hoping there are no further issues. If anyone has anything to add, I'd be interested in hearing their perspective....

One more thing that I question may have a role: this is not an Intel Pentium IV based system, but rather a Xeon processor. Is there an impact in that regard? Any speculative input is welcome...

I agree with your pros and cons. Two other cons we encountered: You cannot use the GV-Readers for indoors, and a "supposedly" 26 0r 37 bit compatible cold weather HID reader on the same system: you have to use all HID readers. We found this out the hard way, when GeoVision directed us to an allegedly acceptable cold weather reader, and discovered that their spec was wrong - it was only good to about 4 degrees. It could read the cards, but not fobs. Turns out there is some sort of ISO compatibility issue between the supposedly compatible HID reader and GeoVision. They have a lot of bugs to work out - though GeoVision says they're building us a reader which will be cold weather (-40) rated reader that will work. We'll see. They also don't have an elevator module, which I badly need. Major pro: their price-point is good. Con: doesn't matter, if you constantly have bugs to work through. That'll eat up any profit margin you thought you had.