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hi all, bought a prebuilt optima, since day 1 ive not been having problems with keeping the channels online in mce, it has dual hauppauge cards i cant remember if its 1100 or 1300, everything works fine, then all of a sudden i start to loose channels, i use the scanchannels dba and it can see signal strenght of 100% on the channels, strange thing is when i load in the channels sometimes it only picks up the SD channels only and not always the HD channels. I finally have had enough and have wiped the hard drive and started again, this works fine for a few days then I start to loose channels again, so i rewiped hard drive and started again, this is now third time. Has anyone got suggestions to why this may be happening before i take it back in for warranty??
Last edited by dogs_au; 5th January 2007 at 07:50 AM.
What comes to mind if it were me could be problems.
Faulty card.
Poor aerial.
Crap drivers.
Old cables.
Heavy interference from wireless or other object of that description.
Optima maybe?
Well i did the wiring myself, i have two digital arials into a reverse splitter facing to both towers, have used quad sheild cabling all through place, and signal strength is at 100%, no wireless running for network. So that leaves me with prob faulty cards by the look of it then.
This has happened to me on the odd occation, but for me closing MCE and opening it again seems to magically bring them back. Rescanning channels might not be necessary for you either. Scanning for me has always been problematic so I avoid that as much as I can. If for some reason I do have to rescan I run MCE reset tool first.
I wouldn't bother wiping my HDD either, just use the MCE reset tool if you want to start again.
well there you go, i didnt know you can have to much signal strength. will turn down the signal amplifier a bit then. hope this works, then i can get on solving my next problems, lol.
The only thing that seems suss with that theory is that you can get the SD channels, which are on the same stream.
Too much signal can be just as bad as not enough.
On second thoughts what EPG are you using? Have you tried using one?
hey lester
iceguide is what im using, had same probs still again, am giving one more wipe and thats it, it is going back to get checked out
also that scanchannel link is down heres another spott to find it.
Yeah, why not send it back..they can even come and witness it at your place, if they're good.
You tried to get it right. Use the support you paid for before it runs out.
Alright have now once again wiped HD started afresh, have loaded in the install disk (which comes with the machine),have done the whole critical updates, then did the optional updates as well. Now normally id add in my plugins etc, but this time i havnt, not even tuner priority.
so next step is to-
activate ice guide-check
configure media center-check
tune in digital stations-check
All stations are up on first scan including the optional frequencies, have picked the best quality ones (all100% from previous channelscan which i had printed off), have then reodered channels, then added listings-check
Ok fantastic all channels are great, working perfect, this is where i left it at last night, then put machine into standby and went to bed, and alas woke up in morn and channel win had dissapeared and would not come back, after doing mce reset etc, tried to update tuner drivers etc etc, lost all the rest of channels and thus again had to wipe HD to start again for 4th time.
This time round doing it a little different, leaving tv on with win playing (just muted) and will see what happens now.
The strange thing about all this is i have had this for over 2 months, had no problems with channels ever, even in bad wind, rain, sunshine. the only reason i wiped the HD in first place was cause playing DVDs was really jerky and supplier told me to do HD wipe and start again, and all of a sudden channel probs, lol. but i suppose now the dvd is working perfect, lol.
will update soon, hopefully if anyone else has same probs with optima, this may be of help or someone has already encountered this prob already, machine still under warranty but would love to sort it out instead of sending back as a last resort.
Have a search around here...there was some one else losing WIN in Canberra now and then. Maybe they stop transmitting sometimes. I don't know the inner workings behind keeping channels etc. in MCE.
Seen that post when i was originally looking for info or fixes on here, but i do not think that is prob cause ive had SD and HD channels working not through pc for a while now and all has been fine.
update
Awoke this morning to find out all is good, all channels still work, everything is running find, Have still left plasma on and have not put mce into standby. Which then brings me to think it maybe to do with standby.
Maybe it is something to do with mce going into standby, i did notice that before i did the original Hard Drive wipe that once i turned off plasma (connected through DVI) and put mce into standby and left it a while that when i turned back on the mce and the plasma i would hear a sound exactly like the add/removed hardware sound a couple of times, the screen would then go black and the sound would lock up, now before the original wipe i would just hit the windows key next to the alt on the key board and all would go back to normal, but now after the last HD wipe i did this and it just locked up and i had to force shutdown the pc, maybe something goes wrong with the tuners and or drivers because of this. Was not originally worried about this, it was a pain but was looking at fixing it next, maybe this is the problem, i think im getting close now.
So my question would be, does the mce standby plugin fix this or is there a way to change the settings that the pc does not pick up that the plasma is off (im assuming it is sometihng to do with standby now)?
BTW, i hope to recitfy this problem and edit my posts on here so others with same probs with prebuilt or other systems will be able to fix this same prob if they have it without taking back machines, cause this site is great and the info on here is great too, its just a matter of losts of reading and trying to search what your after, but this post may be useful if you need step by step fix or resetup, because it seems everything needs to be installed in right order and setup in right order.(especially for optima)
well, well, well, all is still working well up until today, turned on media center from standby and lost a couple of channels, turned back off the on had black screen up, so pressed the windows button and magicall all went well again, ive now come to the conclusion that stand by and the plasma being off is problem am going to install standy by tool or the hibernator not too sure which is better, will read up on it i suppose, unless someone can tell me better???
