Your situation sounds somewhat different from the problem I've seen and also the problem I've seen other people discuss.
In my case, the problem only occurs when I use S3/Sleep (but not S4/Hibernate). Once the card disappears, reboots and power down/power up does not fix it. The way that I can fix it is to power down and unplug the PC for a couple of minutes, then reboot. This has always fixed it for me.
Again, your problem seems to be different, because your problem is caused by a hard power off and for me that is what fixes the problem. In my case, the problem has gone away since I switched to S4/Hibernate
I have seen my card disappear after a few S3 Sleeps. But I have also seen it disappear after a reboot, rare but it happens. I have seen it disappear with both warm boot and cold boot.
I've officially given up on the Duet. It's buggy to some extent and exhibits disappearing problems with both of my AMD based systems (PhenomII/DDR3/AMD770/Win7Pro retail and Athlon64x2/DDR2/nForce520?/Win7 pre-release). I need to find time to get on the horn with their online chat, since no other method works for contacting them, and see if I can RMA this for a HD Combo or maybe a QAM capable Volar. Barring that I guess I am going to get another replacement and immediately put it on ebay. My A180's have ZERO problems so that's the route I am going to have to go.
I love my Duet and ha ve had no problems... I guess its luck of the draw.
I think the vast majority of issues I have seen are with AMD chipsets or nvidia. Maybe we need to search for the common denominators...
Sounds like a good starting point. I dont use any sleep/hibernate modes on either system so I'm not in the S3/Hibernate issues category.
Main system:
AMD Phenom II x2 550BE (o/c to 3.4ghz)
Gigabyte MA-770T-3UDP AM3 motherboard
4GB DDR-3 1333 unganged
BFGTech 600W PS
Nvidia 9800GT
Avermedia A180 (x2)
Windows 7 Professional Retail
The second system is:
AMD Athlon64x2-6000+
Asus M2Ne-SLI motherboard
4GB DDR-2 800 Dual Channel
450W PS
Nvidia 8400GS
Windows 7 Prerelease (normally XP but needed to test for QAM support so I clean installed my old W7 prerelease key while it is still good).
Both systems exhibit the Duet disappearing from time to time though it is much worse in the Phenom machine (which happens to be the one I want it in). The Athlon machine only requires a power cycle to have it reinitialize and appear in Windows while the Phenom machine is a painful lucky draw.
And I have the Intel G43 with (obviously) Intel CPU. The PC that works has an nvidia 630i chipset. There goes the common denominator...
No harm in trying...
Their RMA needs the serial number printed on the card itself. The box is not needed and you can ask them to send you a card first and then you will have the box to ship it back.
Please do report back if your RMA fixes your problem.
I'd vote to get a different card. I have two Avermedia A180 (PCI) cards that work beautifully so dont let this one Avermedia card give you a bad impression of all their cards.
I can confirm the "fixed" cards do NOT fix the problem. I just received by second RMA'd card 1 week ago and it is now pulling the disappearing act. My hardware is all new stuff, so I can't figure out what the issue is.
Do you guys know if anyone is making something comparable in specs (dual ATSC)???
Its not fair to say not to buy this card. You are having issues with it, but I now have 2 of them (both bought from newegg) and both have not had any issues.
I have to agree with rgreenpc.... I have had 2 of these installed for months and they have been rock solid. I have recommended it to several people who have all been satisfied as well.