TheGreenButton - Windows Media Center Forums

Hi all

I'm looking for a bit of help from the community. I'm an experienced MCE builder but had awful problems with disappearing tuners and the Blackgold 3620. My current line of thinking is that it could be motherboard related as I've read other Asus owners have had similar problems.

If you own a Blackgold 3620 and don't have any problems with missing tuners after a restart or sleep could you please list your specs below. I'll then try and get a cheap motherboard/chip from ebay and test it in my HTPC.

Thanks

Asus P5B - Core 2 Duo E6400
Blackgold 3620
ATI 5450

I am surprised you are experiencing this and I would check a few things before condemming your motherboard.
It was a problem noted on the BlackGold support website at the following link..

http://shop.blackgold.tv/epages/BT3159. ... _of_tuners

With latest Win7 MC updates, latest BlackGold drivers and tweaking the background scan I have not experienced this problem for a long while.
I like the BlackGold cards and have found them to be all good except for the AV inputs which do not work.
Hope this helps.
Cheers.

Thanks for the reply but I've now tried absolutely everything I can think ok including....

Re-installation of Windows 7
BIOS update
Changed PSU
Disabled background scanning
All versions of Blackgold's drivers
Changing PCI slot

Looks like I can get a quad core Q6600 and Abit mobo for around £70. I'm willing to pay that for the sake of my sanity.

I bet knowing my luck it'll end up being a faulty card.

Could you let me know what your setup is?

Thanks

I am also experiencing this and have reinstalled several times. I have also got it working until SP1 was applied For which I needed to install My Movies.

Anyway my motherboard is a gigabyte GA-P35-DSCR (or similar, I cannot remember exactly) but it is up to date with the latest bios.

I have tried the suggested fix from Black Gold and it works until I reboot.

Any suggestions you ahve are gratefully recived.

Afraid I can't offer much help as I'm in the same boat as you. I only have 2 avenues left now, replacing the card and replacing the motherboard.

Was hoping to try and find a pattern by looking at the mobo/chipsets of other users with the same issues.

oliroe wrote:
If you own a Blackgold 3620 and don't have any problems with missing tuners after a restart or sleep could you please list your specs below. I'll then try and get a cheap motherboard/chip from ebay and test it in my HTPC.

I have a BGT3620 working without problems since the v8.1 drivers in a similar hw config to yours --
Asus P5E
Intel E8200
ATI 5450
Windows 7 SP1 x86

The BGT3620 is installed in a PCIe X16 slot, as this is furthest away from the GPU and the PSU which may be sources of noise & heat.

(However, if I replace the BGT3620 with a new BGT3650, then its tuners disappear from device manager every 5 minutes!)

Thanks for that. Mine is currently in the PCIe X1 slot but I'm sure I've tried the X16 before now.

Given that people using different chipsets are having the same issue I'm starting to think it could be the card

Edit:
Apologies, didn't realise yours was an X38 chipset, mine is P965

You're right that the P5E does have a slightly newer chipset. I should have also said I'm only using DDR2 RAM in mine.
You've made me wonder now if my BGT3650 problems are chipset-related.
It would be nice if BlackGold provided a list of compatible chipsets they've tested the DVB-T2 tuners with.

After reading up it appears the P965/P35 chipset had PCIE bandwidth issues which were resolved in the newer P45/X38 chipsets. I've emailed Blackgold support about it and I'll let you know if I hear anything.

Thanks for the info oliroe. As mentioned above I am also using the P35 chip set, so if a different chip set may fix it then that would be worth a try, if I can find a different one lying around? Don't want to waist more money

If you have any further updates from Black Gold I would be grateful if you could let us know. Thanks

I've just bought a Gigabyte GA-X48-DQ6 from ebay with the newist X48 chipset. Hopefully I'll get it sometime next week and will test to see whether it's the motherboard that's causing the issue. Not looking forward to re-installing Windows but at least it'll be quick with an SSD. The chip is probably at E6850 (says 3.00ghz Core 2 Duo) which should be a performance boost over my E6400

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/270891579751? ... 1423.l2649

It'll either solve my problems or at the very least I can sell it for approximately what i paid for it. Wish me luck

Good Luck - and please share your results.

I have just tested the card in another machine over the weekend (HP Elite 8000) with a Q45 chip set in and the issues I was having stopped. I rebooted it several times and did not have any issues, even after installation of SP1.

Therefore I am going to be taking the motherboard out of my server (so need to backup several terabyte ), which is a G45 chip set and see if this works, I will swap it with the P35 in the media center.

Good news though! oliroe, how is your test going?

Fantastic news, looks like we're really getting somewhere. Kind of wished I'd gone for a Q45 now rather than the X48. I paid for it on Thursday so hoping it'll be delivered sometime this week. I'm away with work on Thurs/Fri so it may have to wait for the weekend

Oli

keep us updated.

I really want to get a 3650, the quad tuner one, but there is a massive problem with them, I guess the bg3620 is the otherwise the best one to go for?

That's what I thought and I ended up with the same problem Saying that after the test that I did the other day I am going to be swapping my motherboard out this weekend so will let you know how it goes. oliroe swapping his motherboard to, so we can let you know how it goes. Which chipset do you have (please note. that we can not prove this makes a difference at the moment)

Great news, spent 3 hours of last night rebuilding my PC and all seems well with the world. Both tuners work after rebooting and waking from sleep. Obviously this is still early days but I'll report back after the weekend.

I might even risk putting my Hauppauge T-500 in as well.

One annoying thing I've found with the Gigabyte motherboard is the the fans aren't automaticallly controlled, thought this would be a feature on all boards now

That really is, Great News! It makes me think that my rebuild will be worth the hassle.

I will let you know how I get on. Also interestingly I have never noticed the fan control thing with the gigabyte boards, though I probably will now you have mentioned it. Saying that on my media center machine I use the Zalman fan speed controls.

I would be interested how you get on with putting the Nova T500 in as I had this card previously, and got issues with no tuner available when starting up media center (though closing the gui and reopening it did the trick, just a bit of a pain). I also did not realise that you could use a DVB-T with a DVB-T2 card as windows doesn't know the difference, but it may be good for the odd occasion I need three channels recorded!

Thanks for the feedback!

oliroe wrote:Great news, spent 3 hours of last night rebuilding my PC and all seems well with the world. Both tuners work after rebooting and waking from sleep.

Pleased your perseverance paid off, and thanks for the feedback.

Looks like I was wrong, still losing a tuner after sleep/rebooting. Absolutely gutted.

Must be a faulty card