POST error upon adding TV tuner card

[requiem716]

Ok, here goes:

System Setup (currently installed):
Windows XP - Home Edition
Matsonic 9337C motherboard
512 MB DDR PC2700 RAM
ATI Raedon 9250 128 MB (AGP)
Phoenix award BIOS
P4 Celeron (ugh...i know) 2.0 ghz

The Raedon 9250 card is working fine, and has been, which leads me to believe that the onboard video on the mobo either disabled itself automatically, or i successfully did it within the BIOS. In addition, the ONLY display adapters showing in the hardware device manager are for the 9250.

Now, I am attempting to add a Visiontek ATI Theater 550 Pro tv tuner/capture card to my system via a PCI slot, and the system won't boot with it installed

My motherboard has 6 PCI slots (and one AGP slot with the 9250 in it) if i remember correctly, most of which are filled by a wireless network card, a USB 2.0 card, and IDE controller card, and something else...i can't remember. So, that leaves me two PCI slots to use.

Here's the problem. I add the Theater 550 PRO card to an available PCI slot, and reboot the computer and I end up getting a POST error with no video. One long beep followed by two quick ones. Ok, video error of some sort. unfortunately, my motherboard's manual and website is useless in how to troubleshoot this.

I've tried screwing with some BIOS settings, but i'm not really sure what needs to be changed to what, as it is unclear which settings actually pertain to the handing of video. I'm not sure which BIOS version i'm running, but it might not be quite up to date. is it worth flashing the BIOS? the thing is, i don't have a working 3.5 inch drive, so is it even possible to make a bootable disk with a cd rom instead of a floppy? or am i going to have to buy a 3.5 inch drive to flash it?

So, i moved the 550 PRO to the other available PCI slot on my board, and while the computer boots fine, it does not notice the new card at all, even after the drivers are installed.
Once i removed the 550 PRO, everything was back to normal.

Through my research, I would bet that I am having some sort of IRQ/Resource issue with the new card, but i would not rule out of other BIOS setting issues either. My 9250 seems to be using IRQ 11. what's weird is that it shows up as PCI in the device manager, when it's clearly plugged into an AGP slot

The new 550 PRO card is NOT fried, it was brand new and sealed when i purchased it from a reputable dealer. Also, i am definitely seating the card correctly into the PCI slot, as i've built this computer from scratch and haven't had any major issues with installing upgrades in the past.

Please help! i really want to get this thing up and running, and i'm pulling my hair out trying to figure out where the conflict lies... thanks

 

[HAVOC]

First of all, what brand and what wattage is your Power Supply? This may or may-not be your Problem. Anyway... This might be a IRQ conflict, but not likely.

What you should do is remove as many of those other PCI cards as you can. Try to leave just the AGP video card and the Theater 550 PRO card installed and try to boot to windows. What you might have to do, is just leave the AGP card in and boot to windows. Completely UNINSTALL the Theater 550 PRO card drivers. Install the Theater 550 PRO card and try to reboot. Windows should now find the new card and ask you for the drivers. If you are able to do that and everything seems to work. Now try installing those other cards one by one. See if you can boot with all the cards reinstalled one by one. If you get the BIOS errors again. At a certain point, i'm going to almost 100% say that your PSU isn't cutting the cake.

You're PC specs barely meet these requirements.

Here are the minimum requirements for that THEATER 550 CARD
# Intel® Pentium® 4 or AMD®Athlon® CPU's
# CPU running at 2.0 GHz or higher
# 350 Watt power supply or higher
# Super VGA or DVI-I compatible monitor
# Microsoft Windows® XP SP2 or XP Media Center Edition
# DirectX® 9 Video Card
# CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive
# 256MB system RAM
# 90MB available hard disk space
# One available PCI slot
# Cable TV signal or amplified antenna
# Sound card and speakers

 

[timmer]

thats what i thought it would be is the power supply. it sounds like everything isnt getting enought juice.
i would try using the onboard video cand just the capture card and see what happens.

 

[The51]

If I were you I would disable the onboard video and set the Init Display first to AGP. Your motherboard might see the TV tuner/Capture card as a video card or there could be a IRQ conflict as said before.

 

[HAVOC]

Assuming his motherboard has onboard video - that could be the problem. If he does have onboard video it might still be enabled. Disabling it might do the trick.

I think the BIO'S is trying to tell him, "Hey buddy we see you have too many devices installed in this motherboard, and hey one of them isn't getting any power cause your PSU doesn't have the juice. So - sorry, I can't boot to your OS."

Then, he removes one of those devices and then it passes POST and boots to the OS.

I don't know about the IRQ conflict though. I've seen instability and normally a device won't function, but a system not passing POST because of a IRQ conflict, i've never seen that. I'm not saying it couldn't happen, it's just not likely.

Anyone else?