Windows Entertainment and Connected Home

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TV tuner scan only finds one cable card tuner

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  •  

    I have two external cablecard tuners and both where working fine on my Windows 7 system until yesterday.  I reinsalled the operating system and when I ran the TV signal setup, it only found one of the two tuners.  Both external devices have two green bars so I know they are both getting a cable signal.  I have tried several things with now luck.

    -Unplugged the DCT's and took out cards to reset.

    -Switched cards

    -Tried different USB ports.

     -Looked at the settings on both devices, they seem to be fine

    How do I get my system to find the second tuner again, any ideas?

  •  

    How many tuners show up in Network?  In Device Manager?

    Are you runinng the Windows Firewall, or a third-party app?

    Assuming that you're running Windows Firewall (good):
    Uninstall the tuner(s) from Device Manager, and tick the option to 'remove all drivers.'  Disconnect both tuners, and reboot.
    After Windows is done loading, reconnect one tuner, and wait for it to install, then connect the second tuner.

    I have tried several things with now luck.
    And, those things would be ??  ;)

    ~Chris Cupler [MS-MVP (Windows Entertainment and Connected Home)]
    'nearly every day of my life is some kind of computer hell'

    My system specs

  •  

    Trenn

    -Switched cards

    -Tried different USB ports.

     -Looked at the settings on both devices, they seem to be fine

    Unless you're on FIOS, switching cards can produce death. What that CAN do is report the card to the cable headend as stolen and it is deactivated. It may or may not be re-actived with a hit, it might have to be replaced. Switching cards is not a good idea. The whole thing about pairing is that the combination of hardward (tuner) and card id is loaded into the cable headend and then that combination is authorized.

    When you look at the devices in network, do the cards show up without error and with all their links? If so do the links show the card as one-way authorization received?

    Do you see any EMM's processed? That's always a sign that the card is working.

    John

    XPS9100, 24 Gig, 4eSata Tower Ceton (SA-800 M) TAs T-W W Valley (LA)--Win7 Pro, 1 XP-Pro, 3-Win7 Hom Prem, 1 Macintosh X (10.4.11), 4-HP 280N extender, Linksys DMA2100, 2-DMA2200 Promise Ns4300 Raid 5

  •  

    Both cards are showing up in Network and Device manager and neither has errors.  Both are authorized.  I had the cable comany send a signal to reauthorize both but this didn't seem to work.  I tried to uninstall and reinstall the drivers with no luck.

  •  
    JohnW248

    Trenn

    -Switched cards

    -Tried different USB ports.

     -Looked at the settings on both devices, they seem to be fine

    Unless you're on FIOS, switching cards can produce death. What that CAN do is report the card to the cable headend as stolen and it is deactivated.

    That's impossible. The OCUR is one way device. There is no way it can report anything to the headend.
    HTPC Setup: Windows 7 home premium Ahanix MCE303 HTPC case with VFD MCE internal IR board and backlit remote Gigabyte GA-H55M-S2H mobo, Intel Core i3 530 4GB RAM, 2TB Seagate 5900RPM drive LiteOn 4x BD-ROM AVermedia AVerTV HD duet HDHomeRun dual tuner (shared) Ceton InfiniTV 4 MOCUR with Motorola M-Card
  •  

    Firewall, perhaps?  With Windows Firewall enabled, ATI ACTs typically "JustWork."  Third-party firewalls (or, disabling Windows Firewall) typically causes nothing but pain.

    ~Chris Cupler [MS-MVP (Windows Entertainment and Connected Home)]
    'nearly every day of my life is some kind of computer hell'

    My system specs

  •  
    when you run setup does it have another box that says an additional tuner could not be setup? i had this problem with a usb atsc tuner. I tried it on another machine and it did the same thing so on the next page of the setup say you want to manually configure your tuners and it let me pick all 3 of my usb tuners. ymmv
    http://www.revohtpc.com for all of your Acer Aspire Revo HTPC needs.
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  •  

    What happens if you unplug the GOOD tuner from your USB port?  Can it find the other one?  How about unplugging the good one and rebooting.

    Also, try different USB ports.

  •  

    I have HORRIBLE problems with my tuners not showing in Windows 7.  I thought it was something that got mucked up when I did the inplace upgrade from Vista to Win7, but I just did a clean install to Win7 64bit, and the problem remains...

     Basically, I can't get my tuners to ever show up in Explorer under "network" if I reboot....  The only way I've had any luck is to shut down, then bring up the machine from a cold boot.  Even then, I usually have to go under device manager and uninstall both tuners, being sure to check the box that says to delete the drivers.  Once I do a scan for new hardware, they usually show back up.  I may have to repeat this a couple times to get them to show...  But it only works from a cold boot.

    What this means is standby/hibernate/sleep and resume are completely out when using the ATI tuners... 

     Hope this helps your problem!

    Setup in Bio. Go Noles.
  •  

    FSUGrad1999

    I have HORRIBLE problems with my tuners not showing in Windows 7.  I thought it was something that got mucked up when I did the inplace upgrade from Vista to Win7, but I just did a clean install to Win7 64bit, and the problem remains...

     Basically, I can't get my tuners to ever show up in Explorer under "network" if I reboot....  The only way I've had any luck is to shut down, then bring up the machine from a cold boot.  Even then, I usually have to go under device manager and uninstall both tuners, being sure to check the box that says to delete the drivers.  Once I do a scan for new hardware, they usually show back up.  I may have to repeat this a couple times to get them to show...  But it only works from a cold boot.

    What this means is standby/hibernate/sleep and resume are completely out when using the ATI tuners... 

     Hope this helps your problem!

     

    I saw another person say that they had to power off, then unplug the machine to really make sure that it was off, since some of the new "smart" mobos don't always power off like you say here.

  •  

    Also, I'd recommend running Microsoft Security Essentials if you must run Anti-virus.  and if you're using the computer for anything other than media center, especially email or web browsing, then you need anti-virus.  I had a lot of problems when I went to AVG 8, and they continued in 8.5.  I was able to remedy the problem by uninstalling AVG, but since I use my computer for a lot of general purpose uses (and the data on my MC PC is the most important out of all my computers), I wanted to have anti-virus...  so I tried out security essentials, and it works fine.

    Be sure once you install it to exclude the file types of *.wtv and *.dvr-ms because it WILL try and scan these with real-time protection.  I even went one step further and excluded all of the the media center processes too...  examples: ehshell.exe, ehrcvr.exe, and so on...

    Setup in Bio. Go Noles.
  •  

    Cup

    Firewall, perhaps?  With Windows Firewall enabled, ATI ACTs typically "JustWork."  Third-party firewalls (or, disabling Windows Firewall) typically causes nothing but pain.

    I'm still confused why people push the firewall thing.  Mine work fine with my firewall totally disabled.  The only problem I have is the tuners not showing after reboots or resumes...  i have to shut it down, and do a cold boot... then I can usually get them to show...  Sometimes I have to uninstall them (and delete the driver) a couple times, but I can usually get them to show under "network" in explorer by doing this...  once they show, i'm good to go until the next reboot is needed.  no firewalls enabled.

    Setup in Bio. Go Noles.
  •  

    I've had this problem at various times during my love affair with MCE. I have found that if you have the ability to change the "plug-in-play OS" feature in your BIOS, both tuners will be recognized by MCE.

    The Great Trade-Up: http://hizzouse.doesntexist.com
  •  

    Zeke_D

    I've had this problem at various times during my love affair with MCE. I have found that if you have the ability to change the "plug-in-play OS" feature in your BIOS, both tuners will be recognized by MCE.

    Hmmmm...  I'll have to check that next time I dod a reboot.  Thanks for the suggestion Zeke!

    Setup in Bio. Go Noles.
  •  

    rjairam
    JohnW248

    Trenn

    -Switched cards

    -Tried different USB ports.

     -Looked at the settings on both devices, they seem to be fine

    Unless you're on FIOS, switching cards can produce death. What that CAN do is report the card to the cable headend as stolen and it is deactivated.

    That's impossible. The OCUR is one way device. There is no way it can report anything to the headend.

    Ok, so what happens is you switch the paired card into another host. The card deactivates itself because it's no longer paired. Now depending on the cable system, their CS support and who you can get on the phone, they may or may not be able to active the card again. Here, they pull the cards and send them back to be reprovisioned.

    I went though this a couple of times when a service tech tried to use a card he pulled from another customer and called it in and it couldn't get activated. (Ironically it could see the clear QAM at the cable numbers but nothing on a protected tier. This was on a Tivo which couldn't see clear QAM until the cablecard was installed. Once a good card was  in place, everything came in. Maybe many of the "bad" cards found on installs are just cards that have been returned and the techs haven't given them back to be re-flashed).

    So while they're one way devices, remember that the cable co can talk to the card, it can change the tiers on the card and they can shut off a card (for non-payment, etc) They can also ping a card so in effect they're one-way but they can "see" the card.

    The net effect is the same, it's possible to kill a cablecard by switching it into another device if it's been paired with a host. FIOS doesn't pair their cards (and maybe other cablecos do the same) so you can move a cablecard on FIOS from a Tivo to Media Center to Moxi to a tv set without calling in. They just keep track of the card id and activate the card without pairing it.

    John

    XPS9100, 24 Gig, 4eSata Tower Ceton (SA-800 M) TAs T-W W Valley (LA)--Win7 Pro, 1 XP-Pro, 3-Win7 Hom Prem, 1 Macintosh X (10.4.11), 4-HP 280N extender, Linksys DMA2100, 2-DMA2200 Promise Ns4300 Raid 5

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