SageTV server doesn't see my card anymore!

[hufnagel]

Help!

Got my 2nd PVR-250 card in the mail from Frey today. It was different than the retail one I bought...

Retail markings: NTSC 48011 REV G426 (c) 2000
Frey markings: NTSC 32031 REV B126 (c) 2003

Retail is bigger, has heat sink. Drivers are v1.16.11.20347 (according to the computer)
Frey was smaller, has conexant chip and no heat sink. Drivers are 1.7 (according to the CD)

Installed Frey card, rebooted, machine tried to install the card, asked for a CD (which I gave it), and hung hard at the cylon screen on reboot. After pulling both cards, successfully booting the machine and uninstalling all Hauppauge drivers and software, as well as 2 hours of machinations clearing all the crap out of the registry for everything related to the cards and software, I got the machine to boot with just the old card. However now Sage doesn't see ANY cards when I attempt to re-detect it, and as such I can't record anything!

The WinTV software does see the card though, and successfully display TV in real-time.

How do i fix this so that I at least can get back to recording with at least the old card?

[mlbdude]

Look in your sage.properties file for a line saying something like "ignore_encoders". Make sure the Hauppauge is not on that line.

For the different card types, try them in differnt order on the PCI bus. Like the old one first, then the new one and vice versa. There are other tips on this forum to help getting two cards of different type working together. It can be done just may have some tricks to it for you.

[hufnagel]

*Whew!*
I have good news. (No... no Geiko jokes please.)
It's all working now! Here's what I did...

(1) Tossed the baby out with the bath water for EVERYTHING related to Hauppauge and SageTV software; both in the file system and in the registry. Pulled both cards, rebooted a couple time to make sure the box works fine without the PVR boards.
(2) Installed the old PVR board. Installed the v1.16.x drivers. Installed SageTV. Made everything work as before (finally!)
(3) Upgraded the drivers to the ones on the v1.7 CD (1.17.390.21219)
(4) Instaled the new PVR board.
(5) Setup SageTV to work with the 2nd board.
(6) Promptly had TERRIBLE problems recording 2 shows at once.
(7) Installed the latest VIA 4-in-1 drivers (yep... I got a VIA board... VIA_Hyperion 4IN1_V449vp2 was the version I installed)

Well, that only took about 6 hours to solve :\

Addendum:
Old PVR-250 is a v15 board
New PVR-250 is a v16 board
so says the registry entries

It all now works amazingly enough.

Thx for replying though mlbdude. It wasn't on 'ignore_encoders' though... checked the file from a backup I made before I started tossing babies and bath water :P

[David Lawrance]

The "ignore_encoders" tip was just my lifesaver. It might be one for the troubleshooting guide as it could happen to others.

1. The suggested Hauppauge driver update has a step that disables or removes the old drivers... a little utility program that is run. Then you reboot and the "new card found" thing starts. In the meantime, though, I had SageTV also starting, a default setting in my setup. Of course, it doesn't find the new drivers, because they haven't been installed, yet, so, unbeknownst to me, SageTV added a line to its properties file to ignore them. Not knowing that had happened, I overwrote SageTV with a fresh version, removed the application and reinstalled, reverted to old Hauppauge drivers, restored to yesterday's system version, everything I could think of to at least go back to where I was. But I never deleted my property files, so nothing I did to try to go back was effective. Editing that one line was the answer.

Thank you so much, mlbdude!

David