Rebuilt System, No Joy, NVIDIA

[Humanzee]

I have been spending the last 24 hours trying to get my HTPC back up and running. I caved in and bought an AGP MSI 6600GT 128mb VIVO edition last night and a stick of 512 RAM to get away from the flaky PVR 350 TV output and finally be able to watch some DVD’s etc.

I stuck it all in the box after pulling out the old graphics card and installed the latest nVIDIA drivers, and downloaded the trial of the PureVideo decoder. After about 2 hours of trying every single decoder combination I could think of, I just couldn’t get playback to work without being at 100% cpu utilization with choppy video, and limited refresh of the OSD. The PureVideo decoder looked nice through Windows Media though.

I finally noticed that I could not get 3D hardware acceleration to enable in Sage and ended up tracking it down to a bad install of DirectX, I think. My old card didn’t have 3D graphics, so I don’t think it got configured correctly for the new card.

So I ended up formatting my boot disk and reinstalling windows XP SP2, the latest nvidia drivers, the latest Hauppauge drivers and applications and the Pure Video codec. Passed the Direct X 9c hardware test for 3d rendering etc. Yay.

But, now I can’t get anything else to work. Every time I try to set up the WinTV2000 application it only detects 2 or 3 cable channels, and then hangs the system when it completes, auto programing. I have tried both the 250 card and the 350 card independently, in different PCI slots. Same result.

That got me thinking that maybe its something else. So after installing the intervideo codec for Hauppauge I tried to open some recorded video in Windows Media player. No, Joy, 100% cpu utilization between the explorer and wmplayer processes, no video, and the OS basically froze solid.

So I thought it was a codec issue. Removed the nvidia pure video codec, removed the intervideo drivers, and made sure there that there was nothing else set as a preferred codec, and tried to open a WMV recording in Windows Media 9 and the same thing happened. 100% cpu utilization between the explorer and wmplayer processes, and no video.

I tried connecting to some online content via the “now playing” thing in WM9 and it locked up good again

I removed all the NVIDIA drivers and installed the ones that came from MSI, and then updated them via the MSI utility. Same thing.

Now I am testing the RAM for faults, but there have been none detected in the last 45 minutes.

Next step is to take install Windows Media 10 to see if that helps, then I might have to take out the 6600GT and put the matrox back in to see if it is related to the card. Maybe load some alternate video software. I haven’t even gotten Sage reloaded. I mean, I should be able to play windows media files on a fresh install shouldn’t I? Any help would be appreciated.

[Humanzee]

Ok, i narrowed it down to DirectX and 3D acceleration. When DirectDraw, or Direct3D or AGPTexture Acceleration are enabled in dxdiag.exe the computer simply won't play most media formats. It will play some AVI formats though.

With 3d acceleration disabled it will work but with high cpu utilization very slow command response and only with the default video renderer. No VMR9.

Running DirectX 9c

Next is to look into motherboard compatiblility issues

[paulbeers]

I am guessing that there is some "residual" affects to your old video card. I have noticed problems like this when I tried to change from a burnt out nvidia to an old ati I had. It just didn't work right. I have always had to reinstall windows to get it to work right. I think there are utilities out there though that can whipe your registry of previous video card installs. You may want to search for it here in the forums or on the web.

[heffe2001]

He already mentioned that he reformatted with the same results. I'd point my finger at a faulty MSI video card. Sounds like it's just not performing like it should with 3d Accel turned on.

[Humanzee]

I got it figured out last night, I did some research online regarding my motherboard and that video card combination. Im not the only one who had problems. The motherboard was just in need of an updated chipset driver. Luckily my timing was good, the update was dated October 10. There hadn't been an update for a year before that. If I had tried making this switch a month ago I might have not been able to fix it.

Now everything seems to be working well, and I am quite happy with the PQ of the 6600GT. I think it is comperable to the PVR-350, and no more EOF lockups.

Thanks for your help anyway, I was pulling hair out there for a while. I guess the leason learned is to alway update all of your drivers first before you reinstall the operating system. Just to make sure. I bet I have learned that leason before though. I need a transfer out of the school of hard knocks.