Radeon All-In-Wonder TV Crashes System

[GaffMan]

Guys, I've just spent about 16 hours trying to get this Radeon All-In-Wonder TV features to work without crashing my system. Using the card with a Abit KT-7 raid motherboard, 128 Meg 133 Ram, was testing without overclocking. I've read about problems some people have with interupts on the KT-7 so I thought this could be my problem, but no matter how many cards I removed or where I placed them in the system, same result - TV crashed system (but DVD player and 3D apps worked great). I called ATI tech support, and they were friendly and polite, but not much help, and said no similar reports had come in.
I did some research on my own to make sure it wasn't just an IRQ problem.I went into BIOS, disabled USB, disabled AGP 4X. I reformatted my hard drive and reinstalled Windows ME with only the All In Wonder card installed in my machine. After installing ME, ran the latest VIA 4 in 1 and installed the AGP driver in standard mode (not turbo). Then I installed the All In Wonder software. Same results, TV application crashed the system in a short time. Reformatted again and did same thing with Windows 98 instead of ME to see if that was the problem, and the crashing problem was even worse (Installation was worse too ... had to look up tech support, said for Win 98 have to have WEB TV for windows installed to have all the correct files available for the All-In-Wonder).
I've gone back now to Windows ME, have GeForce MX in my AGP slots, all hardware installed with USB enabled, AGP 4X enabled, Duron overclocked from 700 to 900 mhz, lots of software installed, no problems. Going to call ATI again today and have them tell me if they think it's a hardware problem, if so the card is going back. I hate to send it back because the visual quality of the card fantastic, for DVD and gaming.
Anyone else out there with TV problems on this card?

GaffMan

 

[Compellor]

Well, I had a similar problem with the ATI-TV Wonder add-in card. It would lock up or crash my system everytime I would try to run it. I think it's the software and/or drivers that are the problem. I even tried using it with the supported Rage Fury video card and still had the same problem. I don't use ATI or Matrox products anymore because of the poor driver support from both those companies. It's nVidia all the way for me, baby!

 

[Edgy]

I have a similar problem.

800 mhz TB
KT7 Raid
Radeon AIW
Win 98 SE
AIW to VCR, VCR to Cable, AIW to monitor connection

The Multimedia software "hangs" my system whenever I run the TV.

But it doesn't do it right away, instead it only crashes after varying amount of time. I thought it might be that I use VCR (it has a remote control) to watch TV instead direct cable feed to AIW, but your problem just sound too familiar to ignore.

Normally the monitor would display the TV fine but everything on the computer system would "hang" and not even BSOD. Everytime this happens, I have to reboot using the reset button (ctrl-alt-del does not respond).

I checked ATI website to see if there are known problems such as this and I could not find any.

Sound familiar? Well, if you get any further info, please post them as I will do the same thing upon my investigation.

 

[Toonces311]

I had a similar problem. My problem was window was trying to load old drivers that were on the Windows ME cd rather than the updated ATI drivers. I got rid of it by using the latest beta drivers from the ati site. The tricky part is that when I updated the drivers, only the video drivers were updated. Not the drivers for the features in the AIW. You have to manualy install them in Device Manager.

Try the beta drivers. However, you will also have to manualy update the drivers for the devices listed under "Sound, video and game controllers" in Device Manager. Check the driver date for the ATI stuff. Make sure they are around 8-30-00.

Ever since I have been using the betas, I have not had a crash.

 

[GaffMan]

Thanks for the info, I was a day away from sending the card back (I was going to put in in an Intel based PC to see if it had problems there to verify whether problem was hardware or software). I thought this had the symptoms of a software problem, but ATI tech support said that it could very well be a hardware problem, and they were willing to replace my card.
I searched all over ATI's web site for new or Beta drivers for the Radeon All-In-Wonder, but everything except the display driver is for Windows 2000. Is that the driver that you installed? Did you then load the other drivers from the CD?
I currently have a Geforce2 MX card in my computer, couldn't get it to work after removing the Radeon, even though I uninstalled all Radeon drivers prior to putting the MX in. The computer always booted with the video garbled, would work in safe mode and I'd set the driver to VGA or detenator from safe mode, but couldn't get a display on regular boot. I even removed all instances of ATI from the registry, still couldn't get the MX to work. After reformatting and reinstalling Windows ME, the MX works fine. So I hope this driver does the trick, I'm not up to another game of re-install from scratch ....

GaffMan

 

[Wallysaurus]

GaffMan,
I had the same problem. As soon as I started the TV app, my system would crash. The difference is that I am running a PIII 933 on a MSI 815e Pro MB. I solved the problem, though, by downloading and installing the the Special Purpose DriverI haven't had any problems at all since installing this driver. Hope this helps.

 

[GaffMan]

Great News ... no more crashes when using the TV and video applications with Radeon All-In-Wonder card. I uninstalled and removed the MX and Hollywood DVD cards from my machine, put in the Radeon, and ran the driver setup routine. Routine wouldn't work because I had not set up standard VGA display after uninstalling the MX video card. Set up standard VGA, rebooted, ran the ATI display driver and rebooted. After reboot display quality was not the best, looked like MOIRE patterns. Problem was the TV out was enabled as well as the monitor. Disabled the TV output, quality super now (however, whenever I boot, the TV by default is enabled, investigating how to prevent this from occurring).
DVD player wouldn't work - appears the problem was because I disabled the UDF file system (MSCONFIG, advanced options). I re-enabled UDF and rebooted and the DVD's now play properly. The reason I disabled UDF originally was because the Hollywood DVD website had recommended doing so when using the Hollywood DVD card (prevented file not found errors from occurring on newer DVD's).
Still have one problem .... no SPDIF digital signal being fed from the card to my decoder. The web site says in the DVD setup there should be an audio option tab for enabling SPDIF output, but I don't have the tabbed page. Anyone know how to solve this problem? Thanks!


GaffMan

 

[GaffMan]

An ATI Technician just informed me that SPDIF output on the All-In-Wonder does not work in Windows ME. There was supposed to be a flyer in the box that stated that, but I didn't see it and don't have it now (the info is not on their website). Tech said I should check periodically at ATI site and Windows site for updates to solve the problem. I'll post when I get an update that enables the dolby digital for Windows ME. In the meantime, thanks for all the help!!