Fried PVR250 card?

[randy98m]

I'm way beyond upset with my computer right now. Recording had gotten more and more buggy over the last few weeks. It would hang/crash after about 10 minutes of recording, but if I kept things under 10 minutes it was ok. So the other night I was trying to record a full hour long program and it crashed. I wanted to finish the show, so I flipped to my TV tuner and just watched it while the computer sat there stuck. When I came back to it at the end of the hour, I couldn't get it to respond to shutdown. After hitting the power button, one of the files in the "system32/config" foler of Windows was corrupt. Since that point, I've reinstalled windows at least 5 times in 3 days and I keep getting the same error after a few hours of running. Last night I pulled the PVR out and installed Windows. It was running great all day, so I put the PVR card back in, installed the drivers, rebooted to get the same error. This card has been nothing but headaches for me, so I seriously doubt I'd buy another if this is my problem. Has anyone else heard of anything like this?

[wanderer]

It could be a bad card, but I've seen hard drives go flaky and exhibit very similar behaviour - Windows lockups, hangs, corruptions, etc. Often if your HDD is going bad and you just install Windows it seems OK as your PC is just sitting there and not writing to the bad sectors. When you start recording or install a bunch of programs you *do* hit the bad sectors, get corruption and Windows hangs.

I was troubleshooting a PC once and reimaged it 10 times. First it was OK, install anything and it would crash. Scandisk said it was OK, but I swapped out the HDD for a new one and presto - working PC again.

Have you run a full scandisk on the HDD? Does it report anything?
Have you put the PVR card into a different PCI slot? Do you have other cards it might not be liking?

My bet is the HDD though. Do you have another HDD you can try just to see if it works?

[randy98m]

It's not the hard drive. I bought a new hard drive, had everything running on it for a week, rebooting, installing software, etc. I just installed my PVR250 and it gave the same error again. I made a ghost image before this crash, but I still have to get back to that now. Anyone wanna buy this card from me?

[shodge]

Hello,

My question would be - what is the history of this card? If its new you should contact Hauppague for a replacement. This is not normal for these cards. I have a PVR250 which has been running 24/7 for 8 months with no issues.

One of us on the forum (maybe even me) might be willing to give you a small amount for the card on the outside chance its repairable (unlikely). However, before you go to this I would make sure that the card is unusable and advertise the full contents of what you are selling (i.e. remote, PVR250, is it the OEM card from ebay?).

You may try the card in a different PCI slot (different interrupt on some motherboards) and even a different motherboard.

Good luck..

-Stan

[dkardatzke]

Have you tried the card in a different PC?

If all else fails, you can return the card to Hauppauge and have them send you a new one?

[randy98m]

The card is over 1 year old, retail box from CompUSA. I will try to contact Hauppauge, but don't have high hopes for a card that is this old. I've always had trouble with this card, so if I can get it replaced I would likely still sell it as I don't trust it. Time to save up for the upgrade to HD.

[RBTConsultants]

I had similar problems with a card I bought on EBAY about 8 months ago. I called Hauppauge support and they gave me an RMA no questions asked. They did not want a receipt or anything. I sent the card back and withn a week I had a new card that works great. I even asked them to send me a similar model so it would be compatible with the other tuner I had and they sent the same model (-15 with heatsink).

Hope that helps,

Bob

[randy98m]

Thanks for the thoughts/help. I emailed Hauppauge this morning. If I don't hear from them by sometime next week, I'll give them a call. Once I get my machine back up and running, I may make a bootable image so I can restore quicker (I goofed and this time I need to take a long way to get there) and then try it in another slot. I don't see why that would matter as I've used the card in the slot I was trying it in for the last year. I don't want to do it that way either as I've got a fan in that area that won't fit anywhere else.

Thanks again. I'll post again when I know more.

[RBTConsultants]

You definitely need to call them. Email did no good for me.

Bob