TheaterTek pulsing frame rate!

[tryingtimes]

I've splurged on a new sound card to try and improve the smoothness of my pans after Jenz suggested my Hurcules Fortissimo II might be the culpret(sp?)

Well, it worked - kind of!
In PowerDVD XP I now have now improved the pans enormously (still not quite perfect, though).
However, even though TheaterTek has stopped freezing I now get this kind of pulsing frame rate that is absolutely unwatchable!

I now need to start digging a bit deeper and see what else is at fault so I have a couple of questions.

1. - If I use Norton Ghost [installed on C:] to back up the contents of C: on to another drive [say D:] then format C: and try and reinstall everything will I be able to restore if I need to?

2. - Do I need to install any drivers for the Pinnacle PCTV card or can dScaler do everything for me?

3. - When I look at the system information what typically should be running? (I have Powerstrip, Systray and Explorer in the task manager type thing but loads more things show up in the system info app in accessories.)

FYI I have
Asus Tusl2 Motherboard
Intel PIII 1Ghz FC-PGA
Supergrace Radeon VE AGP Card
Pinnacle PCTV Rave TV Card
512 Mb Crucial Technologies RAM
40Gb Barracuda IV Hard Drive
M-Audio Audiophile 24/96 Sound Card
Pioneer 106s DVD Drive
Teak Floppy Drive
Arrowana Airboard IR Keyboard/Mouse

[Rob.Screene]

1. - If I use Norton Ghost [installed on C:] to back up the contents of C: on to another drive [say D:] then format C: and try and reinstall everything will I be able to restore if I need to?

>Yes. You might want to also ensure you create an Emergency Recovery floppy, just in case Ghost doesn't get the master boot record correct, but it's very, very unlikely. I've done about 20 ghost restores (I use it for test Windows builds) and I've had a problem once.

2. - Do I need to install any drivers for the Pinnacle PCTV card or can dScaler do everything for me?

> No drivers, cancel if plug and play find the card. This should just leave it as an unknown multimedia card. Dscaler seems to access the card directly and doesn;t use a driver.

3. - When I look at the system information what typically should be running? (I have Powerstrip, Systray and Explorer in the task manager type thing but loads more things show up in the system info app in accessories.)

>The only extra I have is Girder for IR remote control.

I also use DVDGenie, but this set to be be called on dvd auto-run, it then sets the region, opens WinDVD and closes, so it's not often in the system tray unless I'm adjusting settings (such as to try running the ZoomPlayer in place of WinDVD).

regards,
Rob.

[tryingtimes]

Thanks Rob
So when I reinstall everything and put ghost back on it will be able to
1. detect the backup on d:
2. write back over c: with the old data - this sounds difficult while it's running on c: can you confirm?

Cheers
Alex

[Rob.Screene]

1. Do you have a bootable MS-DOS disk? I think you must have because I don't think GHOST runs under Windows?

2. If so, ensure ghost.exe or ghostpe.exe are on your d:\ drive, next to your .gho volume image backup.

3. Ideally if you can, you may would want these both on a bootable CD-R disk as you can use that to recover from a total hard disk failure; put a new hard disk in, boot off the CD-R and run ghost to restore to partition 1 (C:\). This is the sort of thing the recovery/restore CD's from the major PC manufacturers use.

4. Ensure your D: drive is FAT or FAT32 type (see under Explorer D: properties), although I'm pretty sure it will be if you managed to write to it with GHOST.

5. This way even if you reformat C:\ then you should be able to get to your second D:\ partition to use ghost and the .gho image volume backup. Note that under some circumstances, if you completely remove the C:\ partition MS-DOS will then refer to the only remaining partition as C:\. The drive letters are assigned each time at boot time depending on what disks and partitions are present.

Hope this helps.

[tryingtimes]

Great, thanks
I didn't realise that ghost wasn't a windows app (i've never installed it due to not wanting to clutter my hd).

What you've said makes sense now.
I wont be deleting the c: partition just formatting it so there shouldn't be any problems.

I'll have a go with ghost tonight (probably use a spare partition to test it before I do the final format)

Cheers Rob
Alex