Help - IR Remote stopped working

[Steve2112]

Hi,

Any idea on what might have happened or how to fix it? I made no changes to my setup, and I normally have a Sage lockup about twice per week (end of file bug with 350 card).

Upon rebooting the PC, I received an error "Failed to initialize Infared Remote" and I cannot restart the IR application.

Any idea on how to fix this?

Thanks,

Steve

[Opus4]

You have no other Hauppauge tuners installed? A 150mce or 500mce, perhaps?

If not, then I don't know... Double check the IR receiver cable connection & make sure the IR drivers didn't get corrupted somehow?

- Andy

[Steve2112]

Yes, I installed a 150 about 2 weeks ago. It has been fine for the two week, until the reboot yesterday. I assume by your message that there is some sort of issue with other cards?

[Opus4]

Is it an MCE version? MCE versions have no IR receiver port. The IR drivers can't tell the difference between MCE & non-MCE cards, so you can run into problems with the driver trying to use a card that has no IR port. There were some discussions about that around here somewhere, but no definite solutions.

If the 150 has an IR port, try using its IR receiver instead.

- Andy

[Steve2112]

The card did come with a remote & IR support, I just never plugged in the cord.

It has been working fine for a couple of weeks, and then this just happened.

I tired both ports, but the message still comes up. I'm going to try and reinstall the IR software from Hauppauge.

[Steve2112]

Ok, I'm tired & beat - I spent all Friday night and Saturday morning trying different combos to get the remote to work - e.g. reloading old ghost images from when it did work etc, but after a reboot the infrared hardware fails.

I guess I give up on this combo of the 350 and 150 card.

I REALLY like having 2 tuners.

If I keep the 350, and get a USB device for the 2nd tuner, would my remote work in that situation?

Like I said, one tuner misses a lot of shows that are on at the same time, I would love to go back to two tuners - any help is appreciated!

Thanks,

Steve

[Opus4]

The IR software can tell the difference between a pci card & the PVR-USB2, so you _should_ be able to add the USB2 & have it work. I currently have 1-250 and 2-USB2 on the same system & the first USB2's IR receiver is automatically used.

There is a registry setting to change that preference to the pci card instead, but I don't have time to look that up at the moment. It is on the forum somewhere, or you can ask again later, if it is needed.

- Andy

[Steve2112]

Ok, I went to CompUSA and paid too much for a USB-2 tuner. I wasn't sure if Sage supported both models of the USB tuner (One is bigger & wedge shaped, and comes with a remote, and the other one is smaller, and does not come with a remote).

I bought the one with the remote just to be sure.

I am once again very happy! Everything is working again - the remote works from the 350 card by default, so I did not have to change anything in the registry.

I did have a little scare, the red light on the external tuner went out when I was trying to configure the channels, and I thought I was jinxed and it would fail and would never load, but after resetting the power for the tuner and the PC, everything was back to normal.

I guess I will put the "useless" 150 card that cannot be used as a 2nd tuner because it upsets my IR application back into the Media Center 2005 test system I had. I stole it from there a few weeks ago to test having more than 1 tuner, and that test worked fine for a couple of weeks until the IR app crashed for good with "Unable to initialize infared remote hardware".

Thanks for the help Andy! I can see myself going for a 3rd tuner now!

[Opus4]

You could always end up looking into configuring the WinTV-PVR-USB2 as the IR receiver. That way, you shouldn't need to worry about the 150 & 350's receivers.

(You didn't want the WinTV-USB2; note the lack of "PVR" in its name... unless they have a new PVR-USB2 style & the non-PVR version wasn't the other one you saw.)

BTW - the registry info for specifying which IR receiver to use is in this post.

- Andy

[Steve2112]

Thanks for the ideas and the link to the registry fix - much appreciated.

[Steve2112]

Andy,

Do you think I will lose my remote again if I add my spare WinTv-150 card to my exisiting 350 and USB2 setup? I wouldn't mind having a 3rd tuner.

Thanks,

Steve

[Opus4]

There's no way to know for sure, but that's why I linked to that registry setting -- you can set it to use the receiver on the USB2 & it _should_ work fine.

- Andy

[Steve2112]

Ok, I put the 3rd tuner in, and upon reboot the IR failed as usual. I tried the registry settings to change the preferred card for IR, but unfortunately any setting I tried (19, 23, 24 - and I even tried the 150's 18) did not work.

Now I have to decide if I want 3 tuners with no remote, or 2 tuners with remote.

Oh well, it was worth a shot. Thanks for the registry suggestions Andy.

Steve

[Opus4]

You tried rebooting after changing the registry? #23 is the one you will want to use.

And, note that the "I2CType" DWORD has an 'i' as the first letter, not the number '1'.

- Andy

[Steve2112]

Yes, I rebooted. 23 was the first one I tried. It defaults to hexidecimal, so I changed it to decimal and entered 23 and rebooted. No luck... Just for shts & giggles I tried the other values as well, perhaps it would recognize 19 and use my 350 card, but still no luck.

It's very frustrating, but I'm glad I am able to use the USB2 tuner so I can have at least 2 tuners with a working remote.

I searched on the error message, and one person on SHSPVR had luck with some drivers (I think they are prerelease) version 23035 that fixed the remote problem for him. I am going to try that after some shows finish recording.

Thanks,

Steve

[Steve2112]

No luck with the 23035 driver set

[acrowe]

Does it work if you stop sage (and service), stop irremote, disable your 350 and 150 (but not USB), start irremote, wait a few seconds (I wait 10 in my batch file), start your 150 and 350, then restart sage?

I wrote a "fix remote" batch that I have to run when I boot my machine because of the crappy (IMO) way hauppage wrote their drivers. Its based off of the batch found in post 27 of this thread . This process hurts the WAF, but I know it works. I tried the reg stuff but couldn't get them to work.