Hauppauge HVR-1800 Digital Tuner Error

[Striker77s]

I recently upgraded my computer to setup it up as a HTPC. I bought a Hauppauge HVR-1800 Tuner, a Hauppauge MVP along with SageTV. I have had it running for about two weeks. One of my main reason for setting up a HTPC is to get rid of using DVDs for my kids. They constantly ruin them so I want to store them all on the computer. I wasn't thrilled with SageTV ease of running DVDs off a hard drive. So I decided to try SageMC and custom build my menu system. during the installation I loaded the wrong xml package and lost access to my menu. I couldn't figure out how to fix it so I attempted to run the SageTV install and do a repair. It didn't fix it and when I loaded SageTV it would just bring up a blank screen with no menu. I then uninstalled SageTV and removed the folder and then re-installed SageTV. The install package wouldn't open and kept crashing. So finally I did a system restore to a few days back. I re-installed SageTV and everything appeared normal. When I tried settting up the Digital tuner it will go to "Please wait for the video preview to load" and never finish. After running it several times I finally got it to skip the preview and when I told it to scan for channels it would run through all the channels in less then 5 seconds. (Usually the process takes about 3 minutes) In the end it found no channels. If I force them to add the channels and try to tune to them it will give the error -10 (Something about the tuner won't respond). The analog tuner works just fine but I get very little reception with it. I have un-installed the driver multiple times, downloaded the hauppauge driver mutliple times, used Windows Vista update a driver feature to re-install the driver, and I've used Hauppauge's utiltiy to update the driver. I have un-installed SageTV and tried using Windows Media Center and Hauppauge's WinTV. WMC can't find the digital tuner and WinTV crashes every time I try to use it.

Any ideas what happened? Did the tuner just happen to go bad when I tried to install SageMC. I have tried everything I can think of and nothing helps.

Mark

My setup
Windows Vista Ultimate (latest updates no SP1)
Hauppauge HVR-1800 Tuner
Hauppauge MediaMVP with Linksys WAP54G bridge
1.5 TB RAID 0 storage area for video
4 GB of memory
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800

[SHS]

Frist it been said DON'T use 4GB of memory drop it down 2GB

SageTV ease of running DVDs off a hard drive

That not possable SageTV dose not ease DVD, Video, Picture nor Music beening there no option for that in the menu it will only ease TV Recording when that option is used.

[Striker77s]

I could not find a solution to SageTV and WMC not recognizing my digital tuner. I finally gave up and re-installed Vista and the tuner worked without a hitch. I didn't understand the issue but at least things were working. Then I upgraded my dual core AMD processor to a new Phenom 9850 quad core processor a month later. Nothing else changed (software and hardware) and when I rebooted my tuner card wouldn't work again. I was furious and didn't want to re-install Vista again, so I bought a different tuner card (ATI 650Pro) thinking it would solve the problem. After installing the card it had the same problem. Windows Media Center and SageTV would recognize all the inputs except the digital tuner. After doing some more research I found out it was windows Vista error, for some odd reason associated with DRM the "Windows Media Center Receiver Service" will not start. This will cause exactly what I was seeing. This is what happened to me the first time and for some reason this is a real problem when upgrading from a dual to a quad core. I assume because the DRM uses the serial number from your CPU and when it changes it messes it up. That is just a random guess. At any rate there was one suggestion to delete everything in the folder C: Program Data\microsoft\Windows\DRM. This was only successful for some who tried it, luckily it work for me. I deleted the contents and rebooted and everything started working just fine. Damn DRM!!!! There was a hotfix by Microsoft that wouldn't even install for me and many other suggestions but I'll leave that up to you and a Google search. Just thought I should share my experience as I'm sure many of you Vista users will run into this problem.

Mark