impossible problem

frozen.ice

Active Member
Joined
Jan 10, 2011
Messages
30
Reaction score
0
Hi people

This is my first thread so I hope I'm starting it right... anyways, I have a hardware problem that has been confuessing me and two computer shop technicians. So naturally, I came here. The problem is that I bpught a tv tuner card (video mate vista E500F PCIe). As the names says, its a pci express 1x device. The problem is that my pc doesn't detect it at all... no "unknown device found" or "installing drivers" messages. I had a ecs GEFORCE6100SM-M2 motherboard and all the drivers were installed correctly.... pc shop 1 took it in. Tested the card and said it worked on an other pc.... took it to pc shop 2, they said same thing and advised me a new motherboard might fix the problem. So I got a M2N68-AM SE2 Board. Put it in with high hopes, installed drivers, and.... nothing, same as before... I'm running xp home sp3 and ubuntu 10.04. Ubuntu "lspcu" doesn't detect the card either. Any ideas????? Thanks in advance
 
Sounds like the slot on the mobo is faaked, or the wrong card for that slot.
 
Are you saying it's not even detected in device manager as an unknown device?

This is quite a relevant question yeah - if it shows up then it'll be easier diagnose, maybe just an IRQ problem.

Alternatively it might be a compatibility problem with another piece of hardware you have installed - anything else in the other pci slots?
 
Do you have any other add-on cards installed in the machine that could be causing a conflict?
 
Sounds like those technicians don't have a freakin clue.
So it still doesn't work on your new motherboard?
I would have returned the tv card for another brand or got a usb tv dongle instead.
Did you buy the tv card from them as well?
 
take the whole shebang back to them and tell them they must make it work, and that you're not going to pay any more money as they have incorrectly advised you on buying a new motherboard.
 
Oh, I bought the card from chaos computers. The guy said it might be a driver issue and he couldn't fix it. So I took it to the shop I bought the pc from 3 years ago... essential it sollution, as they still sell a simillar motherboard, hoping they knew a lil more. They tested the card on one of their pc's and it worked apparently. So I thought, it must be the board. Bought other one. The only other drvice is my nvidia gt 240, but it doesn't work with the graplhics out either. today is my last day of the 7 day period, so in deaperate
 
Oh and the power light on the card goes on and the remote light flickkers when used. It just isn't detected at all. No device manager entry at all or on ubuntu, so I'm guessing its not os or software related?
 
Listen - if you want to bring it round to my place we can test it on my PC for you. I won't charge you - bring your case also and we can have a look. I'm not a computer technician or anything but I think with a bit of tinkering we might have some luck. I'm based SSW.
 
Last edited:
Are you saying it's not even detected in device manager as an unknown device?

This is quite a relevant question yeah - if it shows up then it'll be easier diagnose, maybe just an IRQ problem.

Alternatively it might be a compatibility problem with another piece of hardware you have installed - anything else in the other pci slots?

Please read OP again and then you can post again...

frozen.ice, If the card is PCI-E 1x, then the part that plugs into the motherboard is about 2-3cm right?

In which slot are you plugging the card in and what mobo are you currently using? The new one or old one?
 
Oh I just looked at the product page and noticed something:

Certified for Windows Vista/Win7 x86 / x64

It's not officially certified in XP. Did the techies perhaps try it in Win7 machines?
 
cerebus, I assume they are talking about drivers. If I am correct, it should still detect it at least and show in device manager. Also, Ubuntu shouldn't have any problems with detecting it, it just won't work in Ubuntu, unless he gets software in Ubuntu that can use the card.

Agree with you though, I also think they tested it on a Win7 pc.
 
sorry, I'm typing on my phone lol. Its in the pci express 1x slot, there is only one setting in bios and that's to enable pci plug and play os and I tried that, I'm using the new board. On the box it lists xp sp2 as a minimum requirement. And I tried windows 7 myself and it didn't work...
 
btw, the command in ubuntu is lspci. ;)

Are you using onboard display or do you have a display card? If it is the latter, could you remove the display card and plug the tv card in there and see what happens?
Also, have you tried to do a BIOS update? It's a pretty old board you got and I am assuming it is old stock, meaning old BIOS.
 
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X