Wierdest Problem EVER

[Cooper42020]

Hi Guys,

This is going to be long, but I have no idea what to do anymore. I have tried everything with no results.

A while ago I got home late one night and went to go on my computer, and the screen was frozen. I figured, big deal I'll just reset the thing.

So I reset and it wouldnt boot. The next day i tried clearning the CMOS etc, with no luck. So I took the computer into my store and replaced the motherboard.

BAM, it works. So I take it home and go about my business.

It's later in the day and I decide I want to watch some TV. So I open up cyberlink PowerCInema and click the TV button.

It goes to load, and I'm waiting. Waiting, waiting.... system crashes.

I end up removing the tv tuner, uninstalling everything and trying to install it. This time the system crashes while trying to install the driver!

So I'm fed up. I wipe my machine, install windows fresh and go through drivers etc.

I get to the Theater 550 installation and AGAIN, the whole system crashes.

It even shuts off one of my hard drives power.

I have tried many different things from BIOS settings, each of my hard drives, replacing RAM, removing my sound card, unplugging optical drives.... nothing has worked.


My tuner card works everywhere else. It's just in my system it, and any other Theater 550 card will not work... after 6 months of using this thing, it will not work.

I did not make any changes before all of this happened. About a month before I upgraded the sound card and video card. Maybe 2 weeks before, I upgraded the BIOS.

I am aompletely lost, and this has been a huge struggle, because I love this tuner card, and I work on computers daily, this issue is probably the strangest and most difficult I've ever experianced.

Yesterday I re-installed windows 5 times.

Sometimes while trying to install the card, the system does the normal crash and I reset. My sound card and optical drives no longer load. The sound card will re-install but there will be "no audio devices" in windows sound management. And the optical drives will not work whatsoever.

If anyone can think of anyhting I'd be greatful.


Thanks!

[theatrix]

Sounds like your mobo or other system device is causing a major conflict. Can you try the card in a machine that has the same mobo and chipset ?

[Cooper42020]

I actually built an upgrade system with the same card and the same motherboard.

For about 6 months I used the card, all of a sudden it completely stopped working and hung the system.

This specific card I've tried in other systems and it works fine, not the same mobo or chipset, but it installs perfect.

as far as a conflict I'm trying to figure out what it would be. I had made no specific hardware or setting changes until a few weeks before. This was completely out of the blue.

Any suggestions are more than welcome tho, I have tried what seems like everything, but could have always missed some thing.


Cheers!

[theatrix]

Not sure what else to suggest but I can tell you that my card is buggy and behaves differently in every single program ive tried !

[Cooper42020]

For me the biggest problem is that it was working so well.

Literally these are the things that happened

-Working perfect for almost 6 months.
-Came home one night, system completely crashed.
-had to replace motherboard, system booted again
-tried watching tv, system completely crashed every time application was started.
-removed and re-installed driver, crashed every time on S3.sys (or .dll, i forget)
-formatted, re-installed windows. Driver installed, system crashed every 5-10 min.
-could get driver to ever install without system hanging.
-sometimes cd-rom drives and sound card couldnt initialize after, had to re-format

This is so strange because as I stated before, I had changed nothing. I came home one day and my system was completely ****ed (pardon the language, but I've been in a loosing battle for the past month)

I'm hoping my supplier has the PCI-E version soon and maybe somehow that will work.

I can't place and fault on any piece of hardware, or my on stupidity, because I did nothing, all of this just happened.

Wierd hunh?

[Myrdhinn]

Far as I can gather, S3.sys, s3.dll is a driver for old S3 video cards like savage4 and others.. and if that's the case, probably the vid card is to old to support functions the 550 needs.

[Cooper42020]

you'd think that would be an issue, except I run a 6800GT.

There's a file called CTRL.S3 which is in the driver folder.

The biggest issue really is that everything worked, now it will not install. I swapped the motherboard, RAM, CPU, everything.

I have only not changed power supply or video card. Power supply shouldnt be an issue, it's a 400W antec, plus with my CPU and Vid card a max the system runs fine.

Video card shouldnt be an issue cause I had it almost a month before this issue happened.

This is truly an unsolveable issue it seems