PVR-500 Problems

[mkelly4ca]

I bought two PVR-500's and I'm having a lot of trouble getting them to work consistently.

I have installed them in two very different machines, and when they fail to work, they always fail the same way in both machines. When I run the included AMCap_DX9.exe and select Preview, one of the tuners (usually, or possibly always tuner #1) will give the error "Error 80070005: Cannot run preview graph". Sage doesn't recognize/list any tuners that give that error.

I have had both cards working in both machines independently. I tried to put both cards in one machine but couldn't get it to work (I tried this in both machines with the same result).

Both machines are running a completely up-to-date XP Pro. Other than that they are quite different from each other. One is an old Gateway Performance with a P3-500. The other is a custom built machine with an ABIT AN7.

The card in the AN7 machine was working, but then I updated my graphics card drivers (GeForce 6600) and installed nVidia PureVideo. Tuner #1 stopped working after that. I uninstalled the devices, ran HCWCLEAR.EXE, rebooted, let the wizard install the drivers. No change. I uninstalled and ran HCWCLEAR.EXE again, shut down, pulled the second A/V cable out of the header (it was in header 2 as pictured somewhere in your sales material, which was the only reference I could find to which header it was supposed to go in), booted and let it install. No change. (I did this because a similar workflow seemed to do the trick for the Gateway.)

The card in the Gateway is working at the moment. Given my history with it over the last few days I don't expect it to last.

Anyone have any ideas?

[michelkenny]

I would try uninstalling your old PVR-500 drivers, running hwclear.exe and installing the latest ones manually from http://www.shspvr.com/pvr2_drv-apps.html. The ones that came with your CD are probably very old. To manually install the drivers, go into your Device Manager and double click on the video devices with a yellow question mark. Click on Reinstall or Update Driver and browse to the location you unzipped the new drivers from shspvr. Give that a try.

[mkelly4ca]

Actually the drivers on my CD (2.0.30.23074 on 3-15-05) are newer than the drivers at http://www.shspvr.com/pvr2_drv-apps.html (2.0.24.23025 on 1-25-05). But I installed them anyway. No difference.

[mkelly4ca]

I sent the same message to Hauppauge (plus a line saying I was very frustrated with their product at this point), and this is their reply:

You’re frustrated with our product by using a test program (amcap)? The error you’re getting has to do with the video card and its drivers. This program that you’re using is very limited in its functionality. But I am surprised that the tuner stopped working after you changed video cards. Are you getting any errors when you try amcap?

Is it just me, or does it seem like they only skimmed my original message and didn't spend any time actually thinking about what I was saying? Is this typical Hauppauge customer support? Should I even bother to pursue it further with them?

Should I just return the 500's and get USB2's? At this point I wonder if it might be less hassle.

[mkelly4ca]

I Ghost my C drive every 12 hours. I just restored my entire Windows folder to a point just before I updated the video drivers, and it is still broken. If the problem is software related, how can it not be working at this point?

[jlabrue]

I'll just make a quick comment on the Hauppauge support and say yes, that is typical of my experiences with their support. Short answers that pick maybe one problem out and miss the whole picture. It took me MANY emails to cover everything I asked them in my original email.

[mkelly4ca]

I did end up returning the card to Hauppauge, and after only one more email. The replacement card has been working without a hitch. So apparently it was a bad card.