Apparant driver incompatibility with x2 4400 and Happauge PVR 500

[TheInternal]

I recently upgraded from a single core Athlon 64 3500+ to the Athlon 64 x2 4400+.
I immediately encountered odd behavior and found Windows wouldn't boot. I confirmed that if my happauge tv tuner drivers were uninstalled that I could boot into windows. If I installed the newest drivers from the happauge website and set up Windows Media Center for it's usage, I could only boot windows to safe mode.

Apparantly, I've stumbled across yet another incompatibility. I ran into the MSI K8N Neo 4 and Maxtor Maxline III bug before it was published... now this :/

I encourage anyone that is able to reproduce this or that has a similar configuration to confirm or deny this. I've tried the tv tuner card in every PCI slot, but still haven't resloved the issue.

I'm curious if it has something to do with the OS not being able to figure out how to do the dual tuners with dual core.

My system specs:

Antec P108B case
Athlon x2 4400+ with Sythe Ninja passive heatsink
MSI K8N Neo 4 SLI Platinum (with latest BIOS update) with Zalman ZM-NBF47 passive northbridge heatsink
4 x 512 MB crucial ballistix PC3200
EVGA 6800 Ultra in x16 slot 1
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum in PCI slot 2
Happauge 500 PVR dual tv tuner in PCI slot 3
OCZ Modstream 450 watt power supply
Maxtor Maxline III 300 GB SATA hard drive (primary)
Western Digital 120 GB special edition ATA HD
Lite-On DVD-RAM/-RW/+RW (master)
Lite-On DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive (slave)
Windows Media Center Edition 2005
Dell 2405FPW color monitor
Microtek ScanMaker 5800
Logitec MX-1000
Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard

 

[Duvie]

I dont see how a cpu could be the issue here.....I mean I have heard of issues when running some things, however that required the X2 cpu drivers for WinXP to be installed and often the problem cleared right up...In none of the cases did it effect bootup...

I have never heard of a software conflict with a dual core processor and another component in a system...It has to come down to mobo and something in the bios needing to be set to avoid a systme conflict..Again I dont see how a cpu could be the issue..

 

[TheInternal]

My rough theory is the nature of both components really being two in one causing the problem. Sure... it's a rather far fetched hypothesis, but I've yet to hear or see a better explanation. With my single core processor, it worked fine... once the dual core went in, system went to poop. I stripped out my PCI cards and uneeded stuff, and found that it was specifically the tv tuner driver that caused the failure to boot. I'd be thrilled to be proven wrong (thus giving me a way to fix the problem).

The only change was the processor. Everything else worked fine before.

 

[Duvie]

The only thing I can think of is a resource or IRQ conflict...Have you tried moving the tVtuner card to different slots??? Also make sure you have latest bios for your mobo...This issue may have been resolved in updated bios...

 

[TheInternal]

Since you don't know me, I won't be insulted by your comment

One of the first things I tried was putting the tuner in all three PCI slots, with the video card as the only other item in a mobo slot.

The BIOS is the most current. I had the most current before I did the processor upgrade.

 

[Duvie]

gbenson
05-10-2006, 06:01 PM
I am also having a problem with the PVR-500, and happen to have a X2 Dual Core 4400, but I am noticing IRQ conflicts that can not be resolved. One of the tuners on the PVR-500 always shares IRQ's with both the Graphics card and sound card. Have tried all the normal courses of action to resolve (switching slots, different drivers, bios, etc). I suspect its either an issue with the graphics card or motherboard. I tried the PVR-500 in a different system (sempron 3100, geforce 6200, audigy 2 zs) and no problems.
I even tried disabling ACPI (hit F7 during initial windoze setup and chose 'standard pc') but that only cause the Hauppage to conflict with itself (tuner1 and tuner2 took on the same IRQ)

I'd say it was a conflict with the sound card since if I remove the soundcard the PVR-500 works in my system, but using it with the same soundcard in another box works too. so must be in how this system is allocating IRQ's or else there is a driver conflict with the 7800 & 7900 series cards.

Specs below:
amd x2 4400
ecs Kn1 Sli Lite nforce4 mb
corsair XMS
geforce 7800GT (also tried 7900GT with same result)
creative audigy 2 zs platinum
MCEfan
06-01-2006, 08:55 PM
I'm having problems similar to gbenson. Right after installation of the drivers for the TV-PVR-500MCE card under WIN XP MCE roll2 in my AMD FX-60 dual core processor system the dual tuners work great as does every feature of Media Center and my AverMedia a180 digital tuner. But after WIN restart or cold boot [nearly all but not every re-boot], WINDOWs blue screen fails with an equipment check failure. Using the Haupauge HCWClear utility form safe mode to uninstall their drivers clears the failure, allows reinstall, and returns to great operation until the next reboot. On the occasions when it does cold boot sucessfully without having to uninstall/reinstall I also see one tuner sharing an IRQ with one of my 7800GTX cards as well as an nvidia pci controller, the other tuner shares another IRTQ with the second 7800GTX card. I've been working for many days with tech support at Hauppauge and the bios/driver updates and slot swaps do not clear this up. Finally today Hauppauge said there have been a number of customers having problems with this card with dual-core processors and that I should return my card to them for a "Modification". The tech may not be right in my case but i will send the card to them. i have another one new in box for another system build but wonder if I should try tweaking it into the system or just return it for refund and buy something else blessed by M'soft for use with MCE and Vista. What else should we try to get past the boot problem every time? does a hardware mod make sense to anyone?

I found these here..i am hearing IRQ conflicts...That will always be the mobo makers issue...

http://www.2cpu.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-72609.html

 

[myocardia]

I would recommend just wiping your hard drive (at least the partition that has Windows on it) and reinstalling. That resolves nearly all conflicts when adding a dual-core cpu. You'll want to download both the very first file on this page, and the next to the last file: AMD's dual-core Windows drivers and CoolnQuiet drivers page. Install both, after reloading Windows, before adding any other drivers. Anyway, this has fixed everyone's problems that I've seen. Of course, they were all running Windows XP home, XP Pro, or Linux. Your operating system is really the Windows ME of this era, so good luck.

edit: Well, it looks like Duvie has found out how to solve your problem: get another single-tuner card.

 

[Duvie]

http://thegreenbutton.com/forums/thread/126766.aspx

Vader504 seems to have a booting PVR-500 with an X2...he is running an Asus mobo

 

[TheInternal]

already reformatted and tried the AMD drivers too

Oooooh. Interesting post Duvie. Perhaps I should contact Happauge myself.

 

[Duvie]

I have found many who obviously have booting up systems with X2 and PVR-500...most of them that had issues were not like yours buy synch and stutter issues...commonly found at beginning of X2 launch when multithreaded drivers were rare...Hauppauge recommends loading AMD X2 XP driver I suggested above...

 

[TheInternal]

The stuttering issues seemed to be fixed after I downloaded some of the more recent AMD drivers and windows updates... but it didn't solve the boot failure. I believe mine probably is probably an IRQ issue as well. I noticed odd numbers when the IRQ settings flashed on boot.

 

[TheInternal]

myocardia...

so, you've heard that specifically installing the AMD drivers after a fresh format BEFORE any other drivers will resolve the IRQ oddities that prevent boot up?

My sincere thanks to all the responders thus far. Duvie, the links you provided helped me to realize that there is indeed a known problem with dual processors and the PVR-500 which helped me quickly narrow down the list of problems. My sincerest thanks to you and everyone else that's posted thus far.
I'm gonna keep poking at this til I find a solution that can be reproduced. Despite my professional and personal computer maintenaince experience, this has turned out to be a pain in the ass... and a little funny.
If I find a reproducable solution, I'll try to publish it here and get it stickied so those who know even less than I do can find a fix.

The only two "solutions" I've heard thus far are 1) contact Hauppauge and 2) install the AMD drivers first. I've already emailed Hauppauge, and will probably go ahead and try number 2 tomorrow.

If someone else has a step by step fix, then I encourage them to share it. It'd be great to NOT be the first one to publish a step by step fix to this problem XD