Fresh install gone horribly wrong

[Stephmon]

I started with Sage v4 back in 2005. It wasn't without its problems (occasional zero length recordings, hanging or crashing if you watched a show to the very end, stuttering video, full screen mode didn't work) but it was OK. Back in February, I upgraded to v6. There were some improvements, but some of the old problems were still there (occasional zero length recordings, hanging or crashing if you watched a show to the very end (though enabling the "prompt to delete at the end of a program" saved the day sometimes), stuttering video, full screen mode didn't work.

Yesterday, I began the process of wiping the HD and re-installing Windows XP. After several hours of installing drivers, endless restarts and tweaks, I was ready to run SageTV. At first everything looked very promising. The program loaded with blazing speed, full screen mode worked, the setup was pretty quick and painless (once I remembered that teaching the USBUIRT requires that you hold the remote within 1/4 inch of the module).

Then, for some reason, things went horribly wrong. I don't believe teaching the USBUIRT caused the problems, but before I went through that, the video playback on the TV was working beautifully. After, I would get strands of graphics across a black screen and moments of moving, or frozen video, when the graphics animated, or when I ffwd/rev/etc.

So, I thought I might have some setting wrong. I tried many combinations in the setup menus, tested the video (it generally worked, though usually with some electronic garbage at the very top of the image) but playback always looked like I described above and sometimes, would go to the SageTV "green screen of death", slow down horribly, or even hang.

I thought perhaps if I reverted to my previous settings, things might turn around. So, I dropped the Wiz.bin and Sage.properties files into the Sage folder, replacing the existing ones. I restarted the computer, waited for Sage to load, clicked "Watch Live TV" and Sage immediately exited. I rebooted my computer and again, click "Watch Live TV" and the program immediately vanishes.

Now, I thought something must have corrupted when I brought those files in. So, I went to Add/Remove Programs, uninstalled SageTV, re-installed SageTV...

Same blasted thing. I click "Watch Live TV" and Sage instantly exits.

Help.

How do I do a complete/clean uninstall of Sage? What files is Windows uninstall missing? Am I faced with wiping the partition and re-installing Windows XP?

Windows XP Service Pack 2
AMD Athlon XP 2100+
1.74GHz 512 MB Ram
Hauppauge PVR 150
GEForce FX 5500