I have a Leadtek TV capture card, which works ... well some of the time.
In my previous Windows installation it had to be reinstalled 4 times before it would stay stable.
In my current Windows installation it has proved a real pain. It has been reinstalled 7 times since late October!
Last weekend I emailed Leadtek, telling them I was seriously unimpressed with their product, which I attributed to the software. The exact problem which has lead to this continual re installations is that it "loses" most of the "providers." eg I come in to the computer room to see if it is recording okay, and it is recording a different station. Each time I check the config and one or more of the providers has disappeared. This necessitates a reinstall, running a channel scan does not get the providers back.
Leadtek replied to my email with a link to download the latest versions of the software, and that is where my problems really began.
The software comes in two parts, a driver, and the software to operate the card, and the driver should be installed first. They have three mirror sites, one in Taiwan, another in Europe, and one in North America. Seeing as they are in Taiwan I used that site. As soon as Winrar unzipped the driver it popped up a message saying the software was corrupt. I have never seen a message from Winrar like that before.
I then downloaded from the European site and that file unzipped without a problem, but after installation ...
The driver installation requires a restart, and this is where it gets spooky. The computer restarted, then crashed immediately. And the problem was so bad that on two restarts I got the Microsoft web page that asks "tell us what you were doing?" Third time it just crashed and I had to start it again myself. And somewhere in this process I lost sound! I had to reinstall from the motherboard CD!
Yesterday, after another attempt to load the original software I discovered that both my printers were no longer working. In Control Panel they both appear faintly. I cannot print from Photoshop, or Quark. Every time I install, or try to install the Leadtek software I get the annoying "Found New Hardware Wizard." And every time I tell that Wizard to go away it keeps popping up, there is a balloon pop up saying found new hardware, which is then pops up again with "a problem occurred, your new device may not work properly." The install process is also peppered with warnings that the device has not been digitally signed.
BTW the downloaded software scans clean with Spybot, Avast, and mbam. Though the way it is wrecking things seems quite like a Trojan to me.
This is getting so frustrating, and time consuming, that I am considering a Windows reinstall, and I would like advice on disabling the "Found New Hardware" wizard.
In the old days (Win 98SE?) you used to be able to click on "have disk" and it would go away. Plus these days everything is either plug and play, or comes with an installation disk, so the wizard is totally redundant in my opinion.
Hi Dan,
Yes I have Comodo, I would feel undressed without it.
I did not mention it as it had let the download in, and issued no warnings when I was trying to install the driver.
Good name that, driver. It is driving me nuts!
Last edited by xero; 07-01-2011 at 11:16 PM.
Reason: Additional info
I went to Leadtek - We make dreams a reality which was a link sent to me in reply to my initial email to Leadtek.
I would assume it is a different path to the same place.
Hi Dan,
The computer in question is a PC, not a laptop.
Not a brand name, but a "bitza" a term usually applied to cross bred dogs here - bits of this and bits of that. I can list the ingredients if you want.
OS is XP SP3 Home.
Exact Leadtek Model is DVT 2000H, PCI card, so internal.
Was XP working well until the Leadtek install? Yes it was working well prior to this. I did have a bad patch in June and July in 2009. (PCI card was purchased in May 2010). So none of those problems I had in that 6 week period could be blamed on the card.
When installed it was on it's own little trip. I had to reinstall it 4 times over a fairly short period, before it was "stable" and would reliably record TV when I told it to.
On each of these occasions the problem was confined to the software that came with the card, the rest of the computer was behaving normally. This was a reason that I was very reluctant to reinstall Windows in October 2010, I knew it would be a pain again for a while after that. But a bad sector on the C drive really left me no alternative, and I wasn't expecting to have to reinstall the 6 or 7 times that has proved to be the case. That is why I lost patience and asked Leadtek to provided software updates, or an explanation. And they sent me a hand grenade in the clothing of the latest driver.
As for a good restore point, I reinstalled Windows yesterday so no I don't. As malware is known to hide in Restore points I avoid using them, I prefer ERUNT. And I did check the date of the driver download and tried using ERUNT to restore to a time prior to the download, but this sadly did not cure anything.
The driver got scanned with Avast, Spybot, mbam, and the C drive was scanned with SuperAntispyware. None of these was bothered by the driver. I suppose I could have used Avast to do a boot time scan, but that is a six hour process, and can't be done unattended as any time it finds something it stops and waits for a response.
Today I programmed it to record for 2 hours. It failed to start as it should, and I reset the time for 1 hour later. This time it did kick in.
But I have lost all confidence in it and a replacement recommended to me will be here in the coming week. I may also get a KVM and inflict the card on an older computer - still waiting for Leadtek to reply to my email asking what the minimum requirements are. Trust, once lost, is hard to regain and that is where I am at now.
I have gone to Add/Remove looking to uninstall the Found New Hardware wizard (now that is a joke), but I didn't find it.
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