I am not sure when the problem arose. The hardware is unchanged for around 2 years but this problem has appeared in the last 6 months and getting more noticeable..
The system does seem to take along time to reboot with extensive disk activity. I have Vista on one drive with recorded TV on another - both SATA.
Live TV will be functioning normally - a vist to the guide or to Recorded TV even without watching any recorded TV causes the Live TV (in the thumbnail) to start freezing and when it returns to full screen it is jerky for some minutes with pixel-like dropout on the display. TheTV is a Samsung LCD using HDMI/DVI.
Performing the same set of actions on an extender box (DMA2100) does not show the same problems (on a CRT display).
Very recently if I minimise MCE to have a session on the desktop, restoring minimised MCE to full screen causes the application to crash and restart.
I sense that it is due to extensive disk activity but cannot isolate it to what. I hve removed all unnecesary programs, tried running with Anti Virus disabled - checked drivers for disk drives. My windows experience rating for disk is 5.1.
This problems seem to have started after some windows updates but i do not now know which ones.
Any one with thoughts on what to do apart from Vista reinstall. Thanks
Having removed all updates this year, re-installed Direct X without solving the problem a visit to SFC / SCANNOW seems to have done the trick - a corrupted file was found and repaired.
My Samsung UE32D5520 needs that the HDMI/DVI port to which MCE is attached be named as "TV" in the source input options for correct and smooth working of MCE thumbnails - all "scrolling" behaving correctly now
24 Hours later the problem is back.! No changes made in last 24 hours .Expletive deleted.