I attempted yesterday to upgrade my Hauppage WinTV WDM drivers (WinTV Go) to the latest version, filename wdm335-21125.exe (dated 5/5/2003). I downloaded them, installed them, and everything seemed to be working OK...except that the application I use to record MPEG's, Cyberlink's PowerVCR II, will no longer work unless WinTV 2000 (the TV viewer application that comes with the card) is started before PowerVCR II is started. This was never the case before I attempted to update the WinTV 2000 drivers.

I uninstalled the WinTV drivers (using the Hauppage uninstall utility HCWCLEAR) and backed out to the version I had previously been using, wdm331-20012.exe, which I'd been using since last summer. I also uninstalled and reinstalled PowerVCR. Both applications are working - but the same problem still obtains; in order to get PowerVCR II to work, I have to start up WinTV 2000 first. I don't know what to do except uninstall the WinTV drivers with HCWCLEAR and give installation another go, but since I've already done that with the results reported above, I don't know that that'd work any better than it did the first time. Furthermore, when I attempted a test a couple of hours back to record a MPEG with PowerVCR II, the system spontaneously rebooted after about a minute - something that's _never_ happened before in the time (close to a year now) that I've been using the program). I know it's a long shot that anyone else here might have the same combination of software and hardware I do, but does anyone have any ideas?

-Joe-

I still haven't solved the problem, even with the newest HCWCLEAR mailed from Hauppage, but I now know what causes it. It seems that there's a bug in the new WinTV WDM drivers that causes the drivers to require the WinTV program (WinTV32 or WinTV2000) to be opened before any other program that requires the WDM drivers can operate properly, and that this in turn causes havoc with some programs that are finicky about having control of those drivers (i.e., PowerProducer 2.0). Hauppage is aware of this problem but has no fix for it at this moment. Therefore, if you have a WinTV PCI card, do NOT use the most recent WinTV WDM drivers (dated 5/5/03) if you have any other third-party applications (video capture, DVD authoring, TV tuner, etc.) that require the WDM drivers. Also, uninstallation of the new drivers is not entirely successful even with the latest version of the HCWCLEAR utility. Something appears to get left over in the Registry or some such place that causes the system to think the recent drivers are still installed, so even when you have old drivers installed, you still have to launch WinTV before you can launch any other application requiring those drivers.

-Joe-

I'm unfamiliar with the "HCWCLEAR utility" and what exactly it does, however, I'm wondering if you run "SpybotS&D" or "RegCleaner" (www.jv16.org)?

It's possible that either of these utilities might pick up the Registry loose ends...

The HCWCLEAR utility is a program that comes with Hauppage's WinTV drivers that is used for uninstallation of the drivers and programs associated with the card. Ideally, it's supposed to clean out everything, right down to the Registry entries. I do have Spybot S&D installed, and I think I might have RegCleaner around, so I'll try those.

-Joe-

I decided that the video-capture problem might be solved or at least ameliorated if I tried a different card, since I don't know when or if updated drivers will come out from Hauppauge to fix the bug referenced in this thread, so I went out today and bought the ATI TV Wonder and the base AverTV PCI PVR card (this is the mono-audio version, the stereo-audio version is somewhat more widely available). If anyone wonders why I bought two cards, the answer is that I was intending to try both, and take back in whichever one I didn't need. As it turned out, the AverTV card and its drivers installed successfully (unlike last year where I had numerous problems installing the stereo version of this card), and PowerVCR II will now work properly without the AverTV application needing to run first (I did a couple of short MPEG clips to verify that it works). PowerProducer 2.0 also is now able to access the card and generate a good picture for video capture, so I can probably go ahead and start testing the other DVD authoring applications I purchased this weekend. In the meantime, I am keeping my trusty old WinTV Go in storage in case a fix does become available.

I'm not entirely out of the woods yet, though, because I can't record using AverTV itself (which is to say, the AverTV application). TV mode works fine, including closed-caption, and I had no problems setting up my composite-video input, but when I tried to do some test clips using the "record" function in AverTV's VCR mode, I got the following error mesage: "Create video encoder filter fail". The support FAQ at aver.com told me that this was a bug caused by codecs not loading properly during installation and that I should run the FilterSDK that came with the downloaded drivers to fix it (I'm using the latest drivers from the aver.com site). I ran filtersdk.exe as instructed, however, it did not solve the problem. Furthermore, trying to run Interactive Record generates an error message that says that some files are missing and I should reinstall the application, though to the best of my knowledge, nothing was corrupted or lost during download and there were no significant goofs during driver/installation install.

If anyone else uses an AverTV series card in their system and has had this problem, please let me know how you fixed it (if you were able to fix it).

-Joe-

P.S. For Whyzman: I ran Spybot S&D, and downloaded the JV16 power tools which include a very powerful version of RegCleaner. I ran this successfully to eliminate all traces I could find of the Hauppauge drivers and some other invalid entries that had accumulated in the Registry. This is probably why I was able to install the AverTV successfully.