AIW 9600XT, Creative X-Fi, and Guide Plus

[billanderson]

I'm a mostly happy AIW user -- have been for years. But a problem has
recently cropped up.

The right channel of my onboard sound died the other day, so I bought a
new Creative X-Fi Audio card. I disabled the onboard sound in BIOS,
installed the X-Fi with latest drivers from the Creative website, and
all seemed to be working fine at first. I even convinced myself there
was an improvement in sound quality.

Then I tried to run the All in Wonder TV application. The video
appeared momentarily, but just at the point when the sound usually
kicks in, the computer rebooted. "Odd," I said. So I tried TV again,
and the computer rebooted again. This time I said something a bit
stronger.

I have a quadruple-boot system -- Win2K, which I no longer need, but I
keep around for old time's sake, two installations of WinXP (one for
regular use and one for testing), and Vista. I have AIW TV running on
both the WinXP installations. I use older AIW drivers -- the last
version of the Catalyst drivers that support MMC 9.06, which I prefer
over the later versions of MMC. (With 9.06 I am not forced to record
video on demand.) I also have an HDTV Wonder installed and running. I
like Catalyst, by the way. So sue me.

It was pretty obvious there was something about my new X-Fi audio card
that was conflicting with the ATI drivers, so I used ATI's uninstaller
program and reinstalled all the ATI stuff. When I was setting up the
TV channels everything was working fine -- good picture and good sound.
But when I finished with everything -- including Remote Wonder and
Guide + -- the computer rebooted when I tried to run AIW TV.

Now I was really saying bad things. I even tried my alternate
installation of WinXP and sure enough -- the computer rebooted when I
tried to run AIW TV.

So, knowing I was using the latest and greatest Creative X-Fi drivers,
I thought I'd try the latest and greatest AIW drivers and the newest
MMC, which I don't like very much, but what the heck, I was ready to
try anything. Didn't matter -- when I tried to run AIW TV, the
computer rebooted.

OK, now it was time to uninstall everything again, and then install and
test things one item at a time.

1) Older Catalyst drivers -- A-OK
2) HDTV Wonder -- A-OK
3) DVD -- A-OK
4) MMC -- A-OK
5) Remote Wonder II -- A-OK

Really, at this point everything was working fine. I kept running and
re-running TV and the sound and picture looked great. So that left
only .....

6) Guide + -- Computer reboots.

WHAT? Guide Plus? What does that have to do with anything? It's just
a shell for the TV, isn't it? Just an add-on? And remember, I wasn't
even running Guide Plus when I was having problems. All I was doing
was trying to run the TV application. I hadn't even touched Guide
Plus.

So I went to my alternate WinXP installation and uninstalled Guide Plus
and TV worked like a charm. No crashing or rebooting at all.

So please somebody, fill me in. Has Guide Plus gone belly-up and this
is their way of telling me to uninstall? I mean, is it just a
coincidence that Guide Plus has begun causing problems just as I
installed a new sound card? Or is it possible that there's something
about the X-Fi and its drivers that Guide Plus doesn't like? Something
I can fix?

I tried to install the latest version of Guide Plus, but it didn't like
my old AIW drivers and refused to cooperate. So now I'm nonplussed, so
to speak.

Suggestions, anyone?

 

[Todd Sauve]

The moral of every ATi drivers fiasco is NEVER change a genuine working set
up!

Pure and simple, ATi seldom gets the entire lot of its drivers to work
together. Personally, I've gotten my TV Wonder Pro card to work properly
only twice in several years. The video card drivers work OK but the MMC and
Guide+ are a crap shoot. The latest refuse to work properly with Guide+ or
with my Creative Audigy sound card software.

I'll never buy another TV card from ATi unless it receives universal praise
from the using community. The bottom line is this; ATi doesn't care whether
you are happy with its TV hardware. They have your money and only put a
half-hearted effort into making sure the software works

 

[T Shadow]

I'm a mostly happy AIW user -- have been for years. But a problem has
recently cropped up.

The right channel of my onboard sound died the other day, so I bought a
new Creative X-Fi Audio card. I disabled the onboard sound in BIOS,
installed the X-Fi with latest drivers from the Creative website, and
all seemed to be working fine at first. I even convinced myself there
was an improvement in sound quality.

Then I tried to run the All in Wonder TV application. The video
appeared momentarily, but just at the point when the sound usually
kicks in, the computer rebooted. "Odd," I said. So I tried TV again,
and the computer rebooted again. This time I said something a bit
stronger.

I have a quadruple-boot system -- Win2K, which I no longer need, but I
keep around for old time's sake, two installations of WinXP (one for
regular use and one for testing), and Vista. I have AIW TV running on
both the WinXP installations. I use older AIW drivers -- the last
version of the Catalyst drivers that support MMC 9.06, which I prefer
over the later versions of MMC. (With 9.06 I am not forced to record
video on demand.) I also have an HDTV Wonder installed and running. I
like Catalyst, by the way. So sue me.

It was pretty obvious there was something about my new X-Fi audio card
that was conflicting with the ATI drivers, so I used ATI's uninstaller
program and reinstalled all the ATI stuff. When I was setting up the
TV channels everything was working fine -- good picture and good sound.
But when I finished with everything -- including Remote Wonder and
Guide + -- the computer rebooted when I tried to run AIW TV.

Now I was really saying bad things. I even tried my alternate
installation of WinXP and sure enough -- the computer rebooted when I
tried to run AIW TV.

So, knowing I was using the latest and greatest Creative X-Fi drivers,
I thought I'd try the latest and greatest AIW drivers and the newest
MMC, which I don't like very much, but what the heck, I was ready to
try anything. Didn't matter -- when I tried to run AIW TV, the
computer rebooted.

OK, now it was time to uninstall everything again, and then install and
test things one item at a time.

1) Older Catalyst drivers -- A-OK
2) HDTV Wonder -- A-OK
3) DVD -- A-OK
4) MMC -- A-OK
5) Remote Wonder II -- A-OK

Really, at this point everything was working fine. I kept running and
re-running TV and the sound and picture looked great. So that left
only .....

6) Guide + -- Computer reboots.

WHAT? Guide Plus? What does that have to do with anything? It's just
a shell for the TV, isn't it? Just an add-on? And remember, I wasn't
even running Guide Plus when I was having problems. All I was doing
was trying to run the TV application. I hadn't even touched Guide
Plus.

So I went to my alternate WinXP installation and uninstalled Guide Plus
and TV worked like a charm. No crashing or rebooting at all.

So please somebody, fill me in. Has Guide Plus gone belly-up and this
is their way of telling me to uninstall? I mean, is it just a
coincidence that Guide Plus has begun causing problems just as I
installed a new sound card? Or is it possible that there's something
about the X-Fi and its drivers that Guide Plus doesn't like? Something
I can fix?

I tried to install the latest version of Guide Plus, but it didn't like
my old AIW drivers and refused to cooperate. So now I'm nonplussed, so
to speak.

Suggestions, anyone?

Odd indeed. Only thing I can think of is to clean the registry & temp too
when uninstalling ATI, ala ati.com/install. TitanTV & Guide+ works with
MMC9.15. If only it didn't stop responding so often. I have an Audigy2.

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Bill.

One question: Have you ever had TV working in Vista with your AIW?

I, too, was a mostly happy AIW user for years, including about 3 years with
WinXP Pro. Then, a couple of years ago, I got a 64-bit motherboard to be
prepared for the future of computing. ATI said they would have 64-bit
drivers soon but they wouldn't work with anything before the 9500, so I
retired my perfectly good 9000 AIW and bought an ATI Radeon 9600 AIW. So
far as I know, the 64-bit drivers haven't arrived YET! (Maybe they have,
but I stopped checking a year or so ago.)

Even when "new drivers" are trumpeted each month, though, they never include
MMC that will work with Vista - or with WinXP x64. Several months ago, even
my WinXP x86 started giving me the "can't initialize video" message. After
fighting it for a few months, I just gave up and haven't been able to see TV
on my computer for nearly a year now.

So, back to my question: Can you see TV on your computer using your AIW on
either Vista or WinXP x64?

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Currently running Vista x86 build 5744 RC2)

 

[Bill Anderson]

Hi, Bill.

One question: Have you ever had TV working in Vista with your AIW?

Sorry for the delay in responding, but I've been working on this. I've
approached the problem in several ways, but still I cannot get the AIW
TV application to work in Vista. I've experienced nothing even
approaching success there, no matter how many different ways I install
AIW drivers and UCI and various versions of Multimedia Center.

I thought for a while that I was close to success in getting Vista's
Media Center to recognize the AIW. I was successful some months ago in
getting WinXP Media Center to recognize the AIW and load the TV guide
and even respond nicely to a Remote Wonder, but not a Remote Wonder II
believe it or not. I hoped I could make Vista's Media Center work like
XP's Media Center, but even though I did manage to make Vista stop
telling me it couldn't find a tuner, I never persuaded it to display a
picture. Besides, after I achieved my goal with XP's Media Center
months ago, I realized it was easier to make DVDs with ATI's MPEG
captures than with Microsoft's captures, and I went back to the original.

Then, starting from a fresh installation of Vista (a Ghost restore), I
first ran ATI's 9-13_mmc_uci.exe as administrator. It told me the first
time through that it hadn't installed properly and asked if I'd like to
try again, which I did. This time it seemed to install. Then as
administrator I installed ATI's 9-13_encoder.exe which contains parental
controls. I installed the parental controls even though I didn't need
them. Then as administrator I installed the latest version of ATI's
Multimedia Center, 9-15_mmc_enu.exe.

This time, when I started TV I didn't get a message telling me no tuner
was found -- instead, I got the setup program. Turned out to be the
setup program for my HDTV Wonder, not the All in Wonder, but who cares?
This was the first time Vista had told me it had found a tuner. Not
only that, the HDTV Wonder considered every channel it found to be an
extremely strong signal. In fact, it thought every nonexistent digital
channel had an extremely strong signal. After spending a bit of time
deleting every nonexistent channel from the list, I was delighted to see
that all the channels that actually exist looked really good -- no
breakups, nice picture.

The only real problem is that there was no sound.

I tried everything I could think of to get sound, but failed completely.
It was like something was set on mute, but after pummeling the
Soundblaster X-Fi mixer and the Windows Vista sound utility and the ATI
Tv program and even the Catalyst Control Center which was no help at
all, I never heard a peep. All other sounds worked. I even tried out a
CD and it played nicely. But no sound from the HDTV Wonder.

I do remember that back when I was testing newer ATI drivers and MMCs,
that the newer ones required me to disconnect an audio cord that ran
from the AIW video card to line-in. So I tried fiddling with the
line-in connection, but that didn't help either.

So here's the short answer to your question: No. But I'm open to advice.

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Bill.

Now I'm the one slow to respond. I've been hoping for some time to try your
solution but haven't seen a half-day free. I know that it won't take more
than an hour IF I'm lucky but, like you, I've been down this AIW lane many
times before and I'm not optimistic - about either the time or the results.
:>(

I've been thinking that I'll hold off trying to get TV working until Vista
RTM arrives. After I get a good installation of RTM (this weekend?), I'll
go back and see what I can learn from the Vista RC2 version I'm running now.
No matter how badly MMC screws up RC2, I'll still have RTM. And maybe I'll
learn enough to make it work in Vista.

On the other hand, I've also been planning to start over with new hardware
for Vista RTM: new mobo, CPU, RAM - and graphics, going with a separate
HDTV card and putting AIW in my past.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(Retired. No longer licensed to practice public accounting.)
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Currently running Vista x86 build 5744 RC2)

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Bill.

Well, I gave in and tried it just once more - and got exactly the same
results: "The TV player failed to initialize". And the advice to check
"that the correct video driver has been installed and is working properly".
Device Manager says the display adapter driver is Version 8.31.100.0, dated
10/24/06, from ATI Technologies, Inc.; the AMD/ATI website says it was
posted Nov. 2, 2006.

I tried MMC 9-15, first with the inbox drivers with Vista x86 5744, then
with freshly-downloaded drivers from ATI. I got the MMC sidebar menu
installed, and TV is one of the choices. When I select TV, I get the
familiar splash screen (now it says "TV 9-15"), then the "Unable to start
TV" box. The same results that I've been seeing for over a year now, in
every version of Vista that I've tried and in WinXP x64 - and even in WinXP
x86 since last Spring. Nothing that I've tried has had any beneficial
effect.

first ran ATI's 9-13_mmc_uci.exe as administrator. It told me the first
time through that it hadn't installed properly and asked if I'd like to
try again, which I did. This time it seemed to install.

When I ran 9-13_mmc_uci.exe as administrator, nothing happened. Well, it
did start running, but then just faded away with no indication of either
success or failure. A second try got the same behavior. Then I ran MMC
9-15 and it complained that UCI had not been installed so some things might
not work. Same situation as in at least a dozen tries in at least a
half-dozen Win/Vista configurations over the past year or more.

What is UCI, anyhow? My guess is something like "Unified Component
Interface", but I've not been able to find an explanation on the ATI site.
No explanation of the abbreviation OR of what UCI does. Simply that it
should be installed before MMC.

Now the ATI icon is in my SysTray and it brings up the Catalyst Control
Center, but I don't see any other difference in my display from using
Vista's inbox drivers.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(Retired. No longer licensed to practice public accounting.)
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Currently running Vista x86 build 5744 RC2)

 

[xmradio]

here is my install junk/stuff/order for 9600aiw

catalyst 6.6

mmc media center is still 9.14

These files are drivers and encoder.

order of install

net2.0

6-6_xp-2k_dd_cc_wdm_enu_33678.exe

6-6_encoder_33678.exe

Vc8_33678.exe

6-6_avivo_transcode_33678.exe

These are for the tv feature, nothing else, no fm recorder, no guide...

xman

cards used: 9600xt aiw still in use

1300 aiw a real junker, tossed it

1900xtaiw a cooking brick,
tossed it after video display went kookey
on boot, and sometimes worked great...

now using a nvidia card with a happauge pci card, old 9600 is still
working good in other box