Avermedia a188 DVB-T card not found after HTPC wakes from sleep (1 Viewer)

[scott_mckenzie]

Hi,

Ever since I upgraded my motherboard, CPU, RAM and HDD, MP will crash consistently after waking my HTPC from sleep. I looked into it further and noticed that after I wake my HTPC, my Avermedia a188 DVB-T card no longer shows up in device manager.

I have a Gigabyte GA-Z77M-D3H-MVP motherboard, and I didn't have this issue with the same card on my previous M/B.


I have looked around on Google and have heard of this happening but not specifically with my motherboard. I have the latest BIOS installed and have raised support issues with both Avermedia and Gigabyte, but I thought I would get your expert recommendations. Does anyone have the same MB with similar problems or are using a different tuner that is working with my M/B? Any suggestions would be great as at the moment I have restarting my PC every time I wake it from sleep!

Cheers - Scott

 

[scott_mckenzie]

Hi,

I have spent some time with Avermedia on a Skype conversation and I have a solution/workaround that works for me.
Basically I have moved from using 'Sleep' over to 'Hibernate'.

Here's what I settings under 'Power Options' in Control Panel to get Hibernate working:

Turn off the display: 10 minutes
Put the computer to sleep: Never
----and under "Change advanced power settings"
Sleep: Sleep after: Never
Allow hybrid sleep: Off
Hibernate after: 15 minutes
Allow wake timers: enable

The above is part of a longer thread located here -

In addition to this to allow my remote to invoke Hibernate rather than Sleep, I did changed the following Setting:
-in Control Panel - Power options, if you go into 'Advanced Power Settings' then under 'power buttons and lid', change the 'Sleep button action' to 'Hibernate'.

I hope this helps others, I'm confident this isn't just an Avermedia related issue. I have a feeling that it has something to do with the way Sleep works in general with PCI slots with certain motherboards (i reckon why you only see complaints purely about TV Cards is because its mainly HTPC users that use the sleep function) and potentially there could be some BIOS settings that may allow for Sleep to have no issues with TV cards.

Cheers - Scott

 

[mm1352000]

Scott, I think the issue is related to the tuner's PCIe bridge chipset (Phillips/NXP/Trident SAA7160) and compatibility with certain motherboards.
Glad you found a workaround.

 

[scott_mckenzie]

Hi mm1352000,

Yeah what you mention makes sense. I have heard this issue happening a lot with Gigabyte MBs and other TV cards too.

For everyone's entertainment I will share with you the response I got from Gigabyte:

Dear Scott,

Due to sleep issue is usually related to memory modules, VGA driver and Genuine Windows OS, please try the following steps:

1. Please first Load Optimized Default BIOS setting and test your system in a simple environment :

If your M/B is inside a case, please make sure that there's not a short circuit. You can try building the whole system outside the case. And please remove such as add-on cards, devices from motherboard, only install CPU, single memory, single HDD, VGA card and power, and make sure the components on the motherboard are installed properly. If there's nothing wrong in simple environment, try to install several additional cards into the slot one by one to observe the result again and again.

2. If possible, we suggest you try to test your system with other memory, or the memory listed on the memory support list from our website to see if there's a memory or motherboard problem, for memory support list, please click HERE.

3. Please remove current VGA driver, restart OS and reinstall it from our website. For VGA driver, please click HERE. As for Aver media a188D DVB-T card, we suggest you can contact the card manufacturer to see if they can provide you new firmware/ driver to update.

4. Please confirm there is no insufficient power or overheat problem with your system and the TV card. To meet expansion requirements, it is recommended that a power supply that can withstand high power consumption be used 500W or greater. If a power supply is used that does not provide the required power, the result can lead to an unstable or unbootable system.

If the problem still exists, please backup your data and try to reinstall O.S. (make sure it is genuine version released by Microsoft and update to latest service pack). If it still doesn't help, we recommend you to contact your supplier (where you bought the MB) and see if they could help you do the further examination on your motherboard.

Regards,
GIGABYTE

The only suggestion I see of being real value here is the one to reset the BIOS settings. I specifically bought RAM from their preferred list, I have a 540W power supply, and the other options seem extremely unlikely to do anything other than waste my time.

Cheers - Scott