AIW X800 XT and Intel 850 Chipset?

[Rocker]

I've been having a major problem getting the TV Tuner on an AIW
X800 XT to work correctly on my system. The card installs fine and is
stable but the TV tuner simply will not work. When I start up the TV
Initialization wizard, I can get as far as the "Scan for channels"
button but when I press it the system completely freezes, requiring a
reboot.
As a test, I tried the card in a friend's computer and the tuner
worked fine. His system is almost identical to mine except his
motherboard uses the Intel 865 chipset whereas my system uses the
Intel 850 chipset.
My system is completely up to date. I've got the latest BIOS for
my ASUS motherboard and I'm using the latest Intel chipset drivers.
The system is a P4, 3.06GHz with Hyper-Threading and 1 gig of RAM.
I'm using Catalyst 5.3, MMC 9.06, and DirectX 9.0c. I've tried
uninstalling the ATI drivers and reinstalling them again to no avail.
I'm convinced that the problem is with the Intel 850 chipset. Anybody
out there have an AIW X800 XT with a working TV Tuner and an Intel 850
chipset and if so, how'd ya do it? Thanks.

 

[Paul Murphy]

What sort of PSU (make/model and rated max power) is in the machine? I
strongly suspect its not a chipset specific problem but more likely
something else wrong with the system. I've had an ATI TV Wonder Tuner
working fine with an Intel 850 Chipset board in the past - not an AIW X800
XT though. Such a combination would be VERY demanding on power (especially
at the when the tuner is initialised/used - this could explain the freezing
at just that point).

Paul

 

[Rocker]

What sort of PSU (make/model and rated max power) is in the machine? I
strongly suspect its not a chipset specific problem but more likely
something else wrong with the system. I've had an ATI TV Wonder Tuner
working fine with an Intel 850 Chipset board in the past - not an AIW X800
XT though. Such a combination would be VERY demanding on power (especially
at the when the tuner is initialised/used - this could explain the freezing
at just that point).

Paul

Hi, thanks for the reply. My power supply is an Enermax 550W which
is higher than what ATI recommends for the AIW X800 XT (they recommend
300W) so I don't think that's the problem. My previous card was an
AIW 9700 Pro and the TV tuner worked fine on that with the Intel 850
chipset. But the AIW X800 XT locks up my system everytime I attempt
to use the tuner.
Rocker

 

[Paul Murphy]

Hi, thanks for the reply. My power supply is an Enermax 550W which
is higher than what ATI recommends for the AIW X800 XT (they recommend
300W) so I don't think that's the problem. My previous card was an
AIW 9700 Pro and the TV tuner worked fine on that with the Intel 850
chipset. But the AIW X800 XT locks up my system everytime I attempt
to use the tuner.
Rocker

OK thanks for that - I agree that the PSU should be sufficient. How did you
replace the AIW 9700 Pro with your current card? If you haven't already done
so, you'll need to uninstall all the ATI drivers/software, reboot and
reinstall. This is because even though they use the same drivers and
software, the installations will pick up the different features of each
card. Failing that, there's a possibility that remnants of the old
installation may remain and a fresh install on a clean HDD may be in order.

Paul

 

[Rocker]

OK thanks for that - I agree that the PSU should be sufficient. How did you
replace the AIW 9700 Pro with your current card? If you haven't already done
so, you'll need to uninstall all the ATI drivers/software, reboot and
reinstall. This is because even though they use the same drivers and
software, the installations will pick up the different features of each
card. Failing that, there's a possibility that remnants of the old
installation may remain and a fresh install on a clean HDD may be in order.

Paul

The first thing I did was to thoroughly uninstall all of the ATI
drivers and software related to the 9700 Pro. I used ATI's removal
utility in conjunction with my usual removal routine which involves
cleaning out the remaining ATI related files and registry entries.
I've done this many times (everytime I upgrade drivers) and I've never
once had a problem so I'm confident that I removed everything ATI
related before I put the X800 XT into my system. I also made sure to
upgrade my Intel chipset drivers too, prior to installing the X800 XT.
Besides the TV tuner not working, I also noticed that in the
Advanced Smartgart Properties dialog, that my AGP Write is turned off.
If I turn it back on, it will get turned off again on the next reboot.
I'm not sure if this is related to the tuner problem but it probably
is because I know that ideally, the AGP Write should be on. I also
know that having this off is usually due to an outdated chipset driver
but as I said, I did install the latest one from Intel. I've even
tried installing 2 later beta versions but nothing seems to fix this
problem.
Rocker

 

[Paul Murphy]

The first thing I did was to thoroughly uninstall all of the ATI
drivers and software related to the 9700 Pro. I used ATI's removal
utility in conjunction with my usual removal routine which involves
cleaning out the remaining ATI related files and registry entries.
I've done this many times (everytime I upgrade drivers) and I've never
once had a problem so I'm confident that I removed everything ATI
related before I put the X800 XT into my system. I also made sure to
upgrade my Intel chipset drivers too, prior to installing the X800 XT.
Besides the TV tuner not working, I also noticed that in the
Advanced Smartgart Properties dialog, that my AGP Write is turned off.
If I turn it back on, it will get turned off again on the next reboot.
I'm not sure if this is related to the tuner problem but it probably
is because I know that ideally, the AGP Write should be on. I also
know that having this off is usually due to an outdated chipset driver
but as I said, I did install the latest one from Intel. I've even
tried installing 2 later beta versions but nothing seems to fix this
problem.
Rocker

Although the ATI uninstaller is claimed to remove remaining ATI related
files and registry entries I'd still want to give the machine a completely
fresh start off a formatted disk before deciding the card was faulty or
incompatible. Just because ATIs uninstaller has worked for you with previous
uninstalls, there's no guarantee that it did this time or, just as
importantly, that something else with the current installation isn't to
blame. There are some ATI related entries in the registry that are there as
part of windows and are supposed to be there - if *everything* ATI is
removed, that's not going to take the machine back to a fresh install state.
If for whatever reason you don't want to format your drive and start fresh,
you may have another HDD that you could temporarily use to install XP on and
test it out.

Although tedious, reinstalls on a freshly formatted HDD are often the
simplest way to sort out software issues. Given the card tests fine on
another machine I'd say that's your best bet.

Paul