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TBS6981 Crashing Windows 7 32-bit

TBS6981 Crashing Windows 7 32-bit

Postby Judy » Tue Oct 05, 2010 6:06 am

My Asus P4-P5N9300 crashes when trying to use a newly installed TBS6981 - using TBSViewer, DVBViewer or Windows Media Center. By crash, I mean the screen goes black, it stops responding, and the HDDs wind down, so I guess it halts.

I installed the card this evening, and it has crashed 7 times so far. The machine has never crashed before tonight.
The install looks good - in device mgr the hardware id is PCI\VEN_14F1&DEV_8852&SUBSYS_88886981&REV_04
but there is no ts capture device in device mgr - is this correct?
The 6981 crashes with driver version 2.0.0.5, so I updated to 2.0.0.8 - still crashes.
DVBViewer finds the TBS6981, and starts scanning, but crashes during the scan. So does TBS Viewer, and I think Media Center crashes at this point too.
DVBViewer can display a sat programme withoout crashing, which is a start!

Before, I've used Prof 7500 and 8000 tuners and the 6981 scans much faster than these - is this right?
These all worked fine with good signal strength etc, but I've removed these now because they do'nt work with Media Center.

Am running Windows 7 32-bit, with all security updates applied, Core 2 Duo 2.13Ghz, 2Gb RAM, and 2x Samsung 2TB HDDs. The machine has an on-board NVidia GPU with HDMI output. CPU and GPU run at 45C.

Would be grateful for some help and ideas as soon as possible, please, as we are now without TV! :)

Many Thanks, Judy
Judy
 
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Re: TBS6981 Crashing Windows 7 32-bit

Postby Judy » Tue Oct 05, 2010 7:01 am

Update - just reinstalled the Prof 7500 USB tuner, and its scan speed is about the same as the 6981...

Not sure what to try next ?
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Re: TBS6981 Crashing Windows 7 32-bit

Postby cody » Wed Oct 06, 2010 1:12 am

Judy, did you try to test the card in another computer just to rule out some hardware fault, because otherwise what you're describing looks a lot like:

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=37

and then your PCI-Express Prof-8000 card also won't work with that motherboard. so, we need somehow to pin-point what's wrong in your setup, because as you can see there is no one else having such troubles with TBS 6981.
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Re: TBS6981 Crashing Windows 7 32-bit

Postby Judy » Wed Oct 06, 2010 6:43 am

Thanks for the feedback Cody - much appreciated - and you might be right. I didn't realise the link between Asus and Asrock...

Unfortunately, none of my other PCs are PCI-e, as it would be good to rule out a fault with the card.

However, the Prof-8000 is totally stable with the Asus motherboard - have been using it 3 months with no crashes.

Is it a bus timing issue perhaps? The TBS6981 is on a 2 slot riser card, furthest from the motherboard, with a Videomate 2388x hardware encoder card in the other nearer slot. I disabled this card in case of problems.

I could maybe strip the riser card and run the TBS6981 direct on the motherboard if you think worth doing? This might also supply more power to the card.

There are also some strange BIOS options like PCIe spread spectrum <disabled> and Retrain PcieE device to Gen2 <auto> and iGPU spread spectrum <disabled> which I could change?

Thanks for the help! Judy
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Re: TBS6981 Crashing Windows 7 32-bit

Postby Judy » Wed Oct 06, 2010 6:53 am

Changing the BIOS settings made no difference... it will play a programme happily without crashing, but I can only change channel 3-4 times before it fails on the channel change.
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Re: TBS6981 Crashing Windows 7 32-bit

Postby Judy » Thu Oct 07, 2010 7:32 am

Hi Cody, you were right - even mounting the 6981 straight in the motherboard (no riser card), it still crashes, so not compatible with my Asus :(

What a shame; it looks a brilliant card with good driver support and great tech support here.

I'm still keen to buy a solution from you, so would like to buy 2x USB DVB-S2 Q-Box II.
- I think these should work ok with my Asus with on-board NVidia and Media Center 7?
- Will 2x Q-Box II work on Win 7 32-bit, or do I need the patch on viewtopic.php?f=13&t=94 ?
- And about how fast is channel switching - the Prof tuners switch in about a second, which would be great?

If I buy two, how do I RMA the TBS6981?

Thanks for all your help Cody, it makes a *big* difference!!
Judy
 
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Re: TBS6981 Crashing Windows 7 32-bit

Postby cody » Thu Oct 07, 2010 5:46 pm

hi Judy,

i don't believe we're on the right track here, because from thousands of TBS 6980/6981 users there is no one with compatibility issues with Asus motherboards (no matter that they have some relationship to AsRock and also the problems with MSI/AsRock motherboards are rare and usually with older models of their motherboards and that's why mainly TBS 6920 customers are affected). also, i personally own 3 Asus motherboards and i've never had any issues with TBS cards on them, not to mention that if it's the problem i initially suspected then Prof-8000 card won't work either in your motherboard. so, the best way is to find another computer with PCI-Express and try your TBS 6981 card there, because it could be just hardware fault in the board and if it's that we can simply replace it with new one. however, it's good to confirm it somehow with testing on another computer, because otherwise we can exchange your TBS 6981 board and then end up with the same trouble. where are you located? i believe if you're in Europe it will be relatively cheap and easy to send the card in our European support center, where we can test it for you and rule out at least hardware fault in the card.
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Re: TBS6981 Crashing Windows 7 32-bit

Postby Judy » Fri Oct 08, 2010 7:25 am

Hi Cody

This is the 3rd Asus I have too! A big thank you for the time you're spending with this; it's first rate support!!

Borrowed a Fujitsu Pentium 4HT machine and installed the TBS6981 under XP Pro - it scanned up fine on both channels :? I couldnt work out how to use TBSViewer to view channels, but selecting channels brought up program info, which must be coming through the card, so I think the card is alright?

The Asus only has a 200W psu, so I wondered if power supply ripples or inadequacy could be the cause. Stripped the Asus motherboard from the case, connected up a 400W psu, disconnected 2nd hdd, removed Videomate card, put the TBS6981 in the motherboard slot - same problem during scanning & channel changes.

Wondered if it could be something to do with the LNB, so repeated with no sat cables attached - same problem during scanning.

I'm in the UK - what do you think I should do next?

Thanks Judy
Judy
 
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Re: TBS6981 Crashing Windows 7 32-bit

Postby cody » Mon Oct 11, 2010 4:20 pm

Judy Wrote:Hi Cody

This is the 3rd Asus I have too! A big thank you for the time you're spending with this; it's first rate support!!


hi Judy,

you're welcome and sorry for my delayed reply.

Judy Wrote:Borrowed a Fujitsu Pentium 4HT machine and installed the TBS6981 under XP Pro - it scanned up fine on both channels :? I couldnt work out how to use TBSViewer to view channels, but selecting channels brought up program info, which must be coming through the card, so I think the card is alright?


yes, that confirms for sure your TBS6981 seems to work with another motherboard/computer.

Judy Wrote:The Asus only has a 200W psu, so I wondered if power supply ripples or inadequacy could be the cause. Stripped the Asus motherboard from the case, connected up a 400W psu, disconnected 2nd hdd, removed Videomate card, put the TBS6981 in the motherboard slot - same problem during scanning & channel changes.

Wondered if it could be something to do with the LNB, so repeated with no sat cables attached - same problem during scanning.


considering the fact that your other PCI-Express DVB-S2 card is working with the same power supply and motherboard it should be something else, but from your test with another motherboard/computer it looks like some incompatibility with your Asus motherboard, which i find very strange since it's the first such case: PCI-Express interface of TBS 6980 and 6981 is the same and so since 6980 is on the market for over one year now it's widely tested in all kinds of different computer environments by all of our customers.

Judy Wrote:I'm in the UK - what do you think I should do next?


please, mail us to euro_support@tbsdtv.com to arrange sending back the card to us - we have to run diagnostics of the hardware on your TBS6981 card and based on the results decide how to proceed - exchange with new TBS6981 card, because still it could turn out that some weird hardware fault on it causes the problems with your Asus motherboard(s) or proceed in some other way.

thank you,
cody
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Re: TBS6981 Crashing Windows 7 32-bit

Postby Judy » Mon Jan 10, 2011 5:25 am

Good news: final update on Media Center issues - I'm impressed and very grateful to constantine at TBS for lots of help in sorting them out. This summarises his findings:

1. Crashes
Long story, but the TBS6981 won't work in my Asus, whereas a TBS6980 does. Both cards use the Conexant CX23885 chip for their PCI-e interface, but the TBS6981 uses a later revision 15Z, whereas the 6980 uses the earlier 13Z. Incidentally, my Prof Tuners 7500 card also uses the 13Z revision, which is why it doesn't crash (but isn't Media Center-compatible though). The TBS6980 has worked smoothly for a month, so problem is closed.

2. Missing channels
My PC runs both DVB Viewer (DV) and Media Center (MC), and MC finds fewer channels than DV, so I've tried to get MC to find them by picking transponder details from DV and running single transponder searches in MC. Confusingly, MC gets a nice fat signal (green bars), but still won't find the missing channels.

Google shows many people miss channels in MC, and this has nothing to do with TBS cards. Vista had a menu entry in TV setup called 'Add missing channels', but XP and Win7 only show this if you have an analogue tuner. I've hunted through the registry looking for a menu key to reinstate the menu option, but couldn't find one.

Constantine pointed out that both MC and DV are BDA-compliant, so should find the same channels, so my guess is DV just scans for all the channels it can, whereas MC starts with where you live, decides what channels you are aloowed to watch, and deliberately excludes other working channels it finds while scanning. Perhaps this is for copyright/licensing reasons?

Missing channels are:
Channel Freq. Sym. rate Polarise LOF
CBS Reality 12523 27500 V 2612/10600
CBS Action 12560 27500 V 2602/10600
CBS Drama 11343 27500 V 2304/9750

I've also tried complete clears of MC TV data and realoding using several UK postcodes - the channels never appear in MC. As I said, nothing to do with TBS cards ...
Anyone got any ideas?

3. Quicker channel switches
Driver 2.0.0.12 or later noticeably speeds up channel switches on the TBS6981

4. Paused TV display on channel change
Never found what caused this - many hours spent trying stuff. Eventually reinstalled Win 7 and the problem vansihed, so must have been a dodgy file...

TBS looks an active and responsive company, so I'll buy a TBS5980 (USB Q-box with CI) to decrypt Astra 19.2 channels with a Viaccess card - hope to post the results in late January.

Cheers Judy
Judy
 
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