jets 0 Posted October 6, 2009 Greetings: A Hikvision 16ch PC DVR was working fine for hours, handling 5 remote clients connected, when suddenly 10 windows blanked out- no logo, no OSD- nothing. The windows appeared that way on remote PC clients as well as out of the unit's VGA port. In the DVR configs, the cams were all listed as 'enabled'. However, experience said disable and re-enable the cams and see what happens. After re-enabling 3 cams, all 10 showed up again It seems to me that the video card in the PC is just handling getting video images out to VGA and DVI monitors, yes? Or am I mistaken? I would think rather the video INPUT card or some circuitry on the motherboard would be associated with this anomaly. If the prob was just with the VGA output, then I'd be suspecting the video output card. In my thinking, the video output card has nothing to do with the generation of the video signal that is sent out over the network. To me, common sense says the anomaly occurs in circuitry that deals with camera input stream enabling. Dealer won't swap cards because, after re-enabling cams inputs, the problem hasn't shown up again in continuous 48hr operation, and I can't duplicate the prob. Comments? Anyone? Thx Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Soundy 1 Posted October 6, 2009 Agreed, if it was JUST the VGA output, I'd first suspect the video card, as most of these types of systems use the card's overlay mode for the camera display, and I've seen instances where that can be problematic if you have old or incorrect video drivers. However, the fact that the problem also occurred on the remote clients pretty conclusively rules out the video card, IMO. However, it also doesn't conclusively point to the capture card. It could also be the capture card's driver, the software itself, or any of the hardware in between, including the PCI bus, the system RAM, northbridge or southbridge... anything that the data passes through. Since you've been unable to duplicate the problem, I'd say just chalk it up as a one-off glitch for now. If it repeats, you might try reinstalling the DVR software and the HIKvision driver, running a full hardware diagnostic (memtest and/or prime95), and as a last resort, reinstalling everything from the OS on up. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
jets 0 Posted October 6, 2009 Soundy- Thx for expedient reply. Dealer did overnite me replacement video card, but I think it'd be a waste to open the package and swap out cards. Doesn't make sense. Figuring it was a glitch fro now. Will cross other bridges if they come up. Thx Jeff Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Soundy 1 Posted October 6, 2009 I've seen something similar happen on Vigil DVRs a couple times as well, it was very rare, and rebooting generally cleared it up for several months. One machine had to be rebuilt (reinstall Windows and all software/drivers) for other reasons, and the problem never reappeared on that machine... so I would tend to suspect something in software. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
jets 0 Posted October 6, 2009 The configs provide for weekly re-booting. Do you recommend that? Years ago I dealt with videoconferencing units (old PictureTel behemoths) and other AV content server type stuff. After finding that anomalies went away after re-booting, I ended up rebooting daily. An engineer mentioned something about a buffer overrun- in this case image data errors were numerous and created havoc with system. Rebooting cleared the registers apparently. Could be something similar going on here. After all, there's an awful lot of electronics and data zipping around in these machines Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Soundy 1 Posted October 6, 2009 Nothing wrong with a scheduled reboot, especially if it's software-initiated for a clean shutdown. Windows traditionally likes regular reboots anyway Oh, and for those who poo-poo Windows for this reason in favor of Linux-based embedded systems... we have a Mango Raven video-analytics box on one site (embedded PC running a custom stripped-down Linux) that stops responding now and then as well, that I've now got on a power timer to cycle the power to it on a weekly basis - haven't had any problems with it since. I also have a daily power-cycle timer on an old Capture Fastrax II PTZ dome whose autofocus is flaking out now and then, but is cleared up by a camera reboot. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
