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I have a Visiontek Xtasy Everything AGP graphics card.

Over the weekend, all of a sudden, I started to get all sorts of problems.

1) WinDVR kept starting and shutting down (and also causing PC reboots)
I traced this to Win Cinema Manager, which I proceeded to remove from the Startup folder.
Note, I hadn't changed anything, except putting my nView display properties in 'clone mode'.

2) Couldn't get my WinDVR TV tuner picture on my TV set, as i had been able to in the past.

I tried going back to my previous graphics card drivers and previous WDM (TV tuner and capture etc.) drivers.

By going back to the old driver and removing Win Cinema Manager (which I don't really need anyway, luckily) from Startup, that solved
the rebooting and the WinDVR app opening and closing every 2 seconds continually respectively.
BUT I was not able to see my TV tuner card TV output on my TV set.
I used to do this in the past without any problem.

I noticed something very scary though:
The graphic card's BIOS seems to have somehow been altered (flashed),
based on the POST (i.e. black DOS-like bootup screen); the BIOS revision number is definitely a longer and different-looking string!!I did NOT flash the card, or even download any firmware for it!!!

Any ideas???

Thank God I had a concert to go to yesterday, so I could leave the PC alone for a while, otherwise I would have been at it for who knows how long.

flashed... wow... flashing a card is not something you do by accident...


maybe you dhould remove the card and re-insert it... check any jumpers on the card... you might want to try returning the card if it possible....


if you're not shy you could try re-flashing the card

im sorry i dont have any solid advice...

blakerwry wrote:flashed... wow... flashing a card is not something you do by accident...


maybe you dhould remove the card and re-insert it... check any jumpers on the card... you might want to try returning the card if it possible....


if you're not shy you could try re-flashing the card

im sorry i dont have any solid advice...

That's OK; I appreciate the advice.

I am at work, but I had also thought of removing the card completely tonight and then reinserting it.
I did at one point push it in yesterday, to make sure it hadn't come loose, but I doubt that would have done anything regarding the card's BIOS.

I will definitely see what I can do with the jumpers.

Regarding flashing back, there is no flash available for this card...

Thanks again!

Sounds like a virus...


-Scott

I sure hope it isn't a boot sector virus. Maybe I am imagining things; although I could have sworn that the BIOS driver string for the card did change.

In any cases my problems are basically over

1) I haven't had any spontaneous reboots anymore; maybe it was a corrupt dll that got replaced during one the driver or software (WinDVR) installs.

2) In addition, the good news is that I googled and found very specific info on the Xtasy everything included software and drivers (issues etc.) at vcdhelp.com
It turns out that the newer nVidia Detonator drivers do not support
video mirroring properly (with WinDVR at least).

I went back to the last one listed in the post (might not be up to date) as officially supporting Video Mirroring.
It works fine now.
I have also downloaded archived Detonator drivers for the last year.
I will go forward one by one until I find the last one that works.

The good news is that the latest WDM drivers do work with mirroring, so only the actual display adapter drivers affect the ability to mirror or not.

3) I have left the troublesome WinCinema Manager disabled (removed from Startup folder). [It had been causing WinDVR to continually open up and shut down Sunday - never happened before].
It is essentially ONLY a quick launch tool for WinDVR and WinDVD anyway, with the only added functionality being to allow the setting of auto-DVD or auto-VCD playback( i.e. assocation of WinDVD with DVD or VCD playback) - no big deal...

can you link to the post on vcdhelp.com for me?

nevermind. I found it through google search of the vcdhelp site

http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/userguides/110196.php