Need Help! New PVR Build Not Working...

[TheJoelster]

Ok So I had my whole PVR system completed with "everything" working correctly. I had my Hauppage PVR 150 installed in my computer with my cable coming directly from my wall to the PVR 150. I have Beyond TV 4 with everything setup. I had to get a longer cable cord to finish the deal and when I took out the old cord my PVR 150 ended up taking the cable input out of the card. So now my PVR 150 was missing its cable input and obviously could not be used anymore. I will just blame my lack of patience on that one. So anyways after that I decided to try a previous Aver Media PVR 150 card to see if I could just use that one. Well to make a long story short now all I get is static from my cards. I returned my old PVR 150 for a new one and tried out the Aver Media card and neither are giving me any picture on screen, just a bunch of grey and black static. Does anyone have any ideas of what I could do to get this working??????

Thanks in advance!

 

[Lord Evermore]

Presumably you at least did a reconfiguration of BeyondTV when you changed the cards? Did you try testing the cards with the software that they came with?

It's possible, barely, that you did some damage to something besides the PVR card when you broke it, I can't say it's likely though, so it's probably just a matter of telling BeyondTV to check for inputs again. It may be trying to read the old address of the old card, and it might be different with the new card even though it's the same model (and probably is completely different with the AverMedia). I don't know how smart BeyondTV is when it comes to one of it's inputs being removed from the system physically, this could answer the question.

 

[TheJoelster]

The thing is and I thought I might have done some damage as well to the PCI slot but I put my network card there to see if that would still work and it worked without a glitch. I tried the setup about a hundred times that I want it to use the Hauppage card and it selects it but all I get is complete fuzz on both the Aver Media card and the Hauppage. Now before the broken card, it worked perfectly. And like I mentioned I tried using the cable on my TV and the cable is working just fine so its not my cable output from my wall either.. So should I just reformat the hard drive and see if there are some sort of driver compatability errors?

 

[Lord Evermore]

Well at the very least you should clean out all the old drivers. You can download software that can remove old drivers even if they aren't listed in Device Manager (I think you can anyway). Some file may have gotten overwritten with an incompatible version.

You might also try an uninstall/reinstall of BTV before you do a full reformat.

And before you actually reformat, a Repair Install of Windows is usually easier and faster, and just as effective when it comes to hardware/driver problems.

 

[TheJoelster]

Well I will give that a shot, unfortunatley all I have is a Windows XP Home SP1 disc and now that I upgraded to SP2, it won't let me use my SP1 disc.. What is up with that? Anyway I can do a repair windows still? Also I tried uninstalling BTV, no luck... :-(.. What is so frustrating is I had it working perfectly until I was carless and broke the card-

 

[ChefJoe]

ummm, use the hauppauge tool that removes all traces of their drivers, install the drivers for the current card you're using, then run the beyond TV 4 setup wizard and hope for the best. if the setup wizard fails, try whatever crappy software came with the card to make sure it works. also, plug a tv onto the cable to test that the source feed is really working (maybe do that first.... it's the equivalent of not having the power cord in).

 

[TheJoelster]

Ok well thanks for the advice, I have tried the feed on a TV and it works, plus I had it working on the PC earlier, and it was working until I broke the previous card, and man am I regretting breaking that card. I don't recall seeing a hauppauge tool that removes all traces, where would I find that?

 

[Lord Evermore]

A Repair install should not care what SP version you have already on the hard drive. It's going to wipe all the service packs and drivers and updates away. If you tried to install on top of the existing install, it might complain since it's a "newer" version already installed, I don't know for sure. I've done repair installs of XP with no SP on top of SP2.

The hauppauge software to remove drivers is called HWCLEAR. However I can't seem to find any links to it on their site now (and they have a very slim design for their support pages).

Found it (I was looking right past it). http://hauppauge.lightpath.net/software/utils/hcwclear.exe

 

[ChefJoe]

http://hauppauge.lightpath.net/software/utils/hcwclear.exe from http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/faq/support_faq_pci.html

They mention the program by name http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/support/support_pvr150.html