[TCDave]

Greetings all. I am a new poster here. I haven't seen any recent posts here on the issue of getting this card's tuner to work in W7 WMC, nor have I found any recent information anywhere on the interwebs

Is it just that everyone has given up? Or is the solution just too simple to discuss any further?

Here's my story:


I got an ATI All-in-Wonder HD card to create my HTPC. I had XP without WMC at the time and shortly upgraded to W7 Pro 32 bit. After some fiddling of the kind described elsewhere here, I was able to get the tuner working in WMC. Wonderful! This was with W7 as it came on the install disk, before updating. Hooked the PC up to the internet. Windows installed the latest updates and the tuner hasn't worked since.


I've tried every solution described here and elsewhere. Drivers old and new. Uninstalling and reinstalling. Letting Windows find the drivers and browsing to them myself (the latter never has worked, Windows doesn't seem to recognize the downloaded drivers on my H-drive.


I know AMD is not supporting the AIWHD in W7, despite having drivers purportedly for it. Am I s.o.l.? Do I have an okay HD graphics card with no tuner? Does anyone have this tuner working in W7? I'm so desperate for an answer that I've joined this forum

Any help will be greatly appreciated, thanks!

 

[walford]

ATI never wrote all new drivers for AIW card tuners required for Vista or later due to the development time and other costs involved which is why there are none available on their web site. The last time I checked the ATI website stated this.

 

[TCDave]

Thanks for the response. I know it was a long post. Perhaps you quit reading before the last graph. It's probably a rhetorical question, but since Visiontek (manuf. of my card) and AMD (ATI) both list software/drivers for W7, has anyone had any luck using the AIW HD card with the latest updates of W7?

 

[walford]

Soruninstall the card and then reinstall it using the install disk.ry I was thinking about the older SD AIW cards and the AIW HD card.


Do you have another graphics card you can use on the system while you are trying locate and remove oll ATI-HD drivers on the system so that you can reinstall the card from scratch using the drives on the install disk. Getting graphic card and tuner card updates from MS often causes problems since they are often out of date and incompatible with latest OS updates.

 

[Andrew Hornfeck]

I've been running my old ATi HDTV-Wonder on Win 7 Home Premium just fine! It's even older than your card... Don't have any suggestions other than you say windows doesn't recognize your downloaded drivers... if you point to them as an update how does it not recognize them? You could be onto something about it being a video card/tuner combo... I have an old AIW 9600xt that took special drivers with an ATi WDM (windows device manager) to make it run (as was the norm back in the day)... maybe your 'new' drivers are leaving that out, subsequently you can't see the tuner... I'd research that angle and see if you can get an older driver to run, oh, and set your Windows Updates to download and ASK you what/when to install.


BTW, you can buy a tuner for adound $50 and a video card for $10-15... not a big issue to replace them both in todays market!

 

[H8nXTC]

"ATI never wrote all new drivers for AIW card tuners required for Vista or later due to the development time and other costs involved which is why there are none available on their web site. The last time I checked the ATI website stated this."


walford is mistaken, the newest (last) A-I-W HD came with Vista drivers, you can download them. I've got that card too, but I don't think ATI/AMD released Windows 7 specific drivers for it.

 

[TCDave]

Thank you all for your responses. The suggestion to go back to the install disk (2008 XP and Vista) finally worked. I had tried it before, but didn't perform the proper incantations and dances. The key was to prevent W7 from installing it's own driver. It took several attempts-- even with auto updates totally disabled, Windows kept trying. Uninstalled the MS drivers and installed the ATI disk drivers before re-booting. Oh, and set the ATI disk autorun to run in Vista compatibility mode.


I'm excited to dig deeper into this site; tons of the stuff I love... ]

 

[walford]



Quote:
Originally Posted by H8nXTC /forum/post/19570254


"ATI never wrote all new drivers for AIW card tuners required for Vista or later due to the development time and other costs involved which is why there are none available on their web site. The last time I checked the ATI website stated this."


walford is mistaken, the newest (last) A-I-W HD came with Vista drivers, you can download them. I've got that card too, but I don't think ATI/AMD released Windows 7 specific drivers for it.

I allready acknowledged that my first post was based on the old AIW cards and not not on the AIW HD card which was developed with full support for Vista.

 

[Andrew Hornfeck]

Congrats! What are you using for a front-end? WMC or something else? Just how old is your system anyway? Care to post the mobo model, CPU, & RAM or is this just something you want to tinker around with?


UPDATE: I didn't realize you can still BUY one of these! I thought the AIW series died with the AGP buss... I now appreciate your wanting to get the tuner working!

 

[TCDave]

I'm using a 2007 vintage Dell Dimension E520 my former employer gave me, thinking it didn't work. They had removed the hard drive. Once I put a new one in and fiddled with the bios RAID settings, voila! free computer. It has a big, sturdy chassis with easy access and plenty of room for expansion. I had a growing interest in the HTPC concept, having spent 25 years in video production around, and later with, computers. With that in mind, I set about upgrading my box:

• the Visiontek A-I-W HD card, from eBay

• an AVerTV HDMI input card (for transferring media from my DirecTV HD DVR for editing and burning to disk)

• a CoolerMaster 500W power supply

• a Samsung Blu-ray ROM/DVD burner

• a SIIG wireless keyboard/trackpad

• 2 more gigs RAM for a total of four

• and 2 days ago, an Intel Q6700 Core2 Quad 2.66 gHz processor, the fastest the motherboard can handle, because the old one just wasn't hacking it

I upgraded to W7 mainly for WMC, and so far I'm happy with both. Before I discovered this site, my main source of info was http://www.hdtvtunerinfo.com/ . That site's (somewhat outdated) information was my reason for choosing the A-I-W HD card and WMC. WMC's DVR capabilities will nicely compliment my DirecTV DVR's, and the AVerTV HDMI card will allow me to archive shows from the DTV DVR and free up some of its 90% full hard drive space. It all feeds my 37" LCD and big old, great sounding ProLogic stereo. My wish list includes a 50" plasma screen and a Dolby Digital HDMI switching receiver

.


And BTW, the A-I-W HD is x16 PCI Express now.


Thanks for asking!