[SOLVED] AVerMedia A188 AverTV card will not show up in device manager

[IncredibleHat]

I've had this old AVerMedia A188 HD Duet in my older HTPC for years, and its worked just fine, recording OTA HD to SageTV. However I've got spare parts to build a better HTPC (old parts but newer), and transferred the AVerMedia to it to use. It won't show up in device manager, so I cannot even get drivers installed, or use it in SageTV.

Older htpc is a ASUS Z87-A motherboard, i7 4770K, with Windows 7 upgraded to Windows 10 at some point. It works FINE with the capture card. Works:

View: https://imgur.com/xwPlpo3


Newer htpc parts I put together is a MSI Z170A M5, i7 6700K, with Windows 10. Capture card wont even show up in device manager to get rolling. Tried:

View: https://imgur.com/MPWN3DO


Both are using the iGPU of the CPUs, so no GPU card is stuffing up the works.

Things I've tried:

Reboot multiple times.
Rescan hardware changes.
Turned on everything I could find in the BIOS.
Tried every single one of the pcie 1x slots, and the far end 4x slot (did not try the silver bracket GPU slots).

Something I do notice, is if I pull the card out, and move to another slot, and then boot the machine. It immediately shuts off, then boots up again. I assume this is 'normal change of hardware detected' behavior of this MSI board. But if its detecting hardware, why isn't it showing up in device manager?

If its a "Windows 10 issue", then I'm wondering why the older machine with Win10 works, but the new machine with Win10 doesnt.

At a loss what next to try. AVerMedia's support faq/help site won't list anything but some program to download. But if I cannot even get the card to show up in the device manager, no app is going to help me (? right ?).

 

[Paperdoc]

The only ideas I could find amount to telling your new mobo to slow down how it uses cards in the PCIe slots, assuming you tuner card is an older design. In the manual on p. 49 the PEGX option lets you limit what the PCIe slots can do for older hardware. The item below, PCI Latency Timer, also slows down certain aspects of its operations.

 

[IncredibleHat]

Thats..... interesting. I did come across something in the BIOS about latency, but it was set to the smallest number (which I would assume is the slowest). I will check more at that setting and try the biggest number tomorrow when I dive back into troubleshooting the issue. Thanks for the tip!

 

[Paperdoc]

Yeah, I had to read that item carefully, too. It is the number of clock cycles to wait, apparently. So MORE waits longer, but that may slow down all uses of the PCIe bus, I'll be interested in whether that helps the problem, and what that does to performance.

 

[IncredibleHat]

Ok, spent two hours this morning trying every combination of the "PEG0" "PEG1" settings of "Auto" "Gen 1" "Gen 2" "Gen 3", and also the "PCI Latency Timer" ranging from 32 to 288.

Even hopped around the PCIe slots again trying different settings.

Even took OUT my M2 SSD (thinking maybe it conflicts, since it conflicts with SATA Ports 5 and 6).

Also switched my iGPU from "PEG" to "IGD" (no noticed difference in display output).

None of the above worked.

SO I stuck the tuner card into the GPU PCIE 16x slot. Doing this caused "something" to show up in device manager, but not the right thing. It came up as "Other Devices" "Multimedia Device".... and windows had no drivers for it, could not identify it, and wouldn't work with it.

I loaded up that AVerMedia Assist Central software, and even it was like "Nope, no devices detected".

Whats odd, is in the BIOS "Board Explorer" if I put the card into ANY slot except the shiny silver GPU slots, it won't see it. But when I put it in one of the two GPU slots, it shows up as this (the red gpu slot the mouse cursor is hovering over):

View: https://imgur.com/SBk8OrQ


I dunno what the deal is now ....... this card works FINE when I put it back into the super-old ASUS rig.

 

[IncredibleHat]

So on a hunch, I decided to try and stick the TV tuner card into my brand new board.... an MSI Z690A Pro ... to see if it shows up.

No dice.

Starting to think this old pcie1x card is not got the right whatnots internally to make it behave on anything remotely new (even though a 7 year old board is not new!).

I dug around on AVerMedias support site, and they won't even list this card to send a support ticket question in on =p how rude lol.

 

[Paperdoc]

Maybe Tech Support at AverMedia can tell you something sbout this.

 

[SyCoREAPER]

Try putting it in one of the full sized slots and set bifurcation 4x4x4x4

 

[IncredibleHat]

Try putting it in one of the full sized slots and set bifurcation 4x4x4x4

I'm not seeing anything named bifurcation in the manual/bios... ???

Maybe Tech Support at AverMedia can tell you something sbout this.

I was thinking of sending in a ticket on their support form, but they dont list the A188 AverTV card at all as a choice, and their form required a choice, without any 'other' or 'not listed' choice! LOL 🙁

 

[SyCoREAPER]

I'm not seeing anything named bifurcation in the manual/bios... ???

I was thinking of sending in a ticket on their support form, but they dont list the A188 AverTV card at all as a choice, and their form required a choice, without any 'other' or 'not listed' choice! LOL 🙁

Some motherboard don't, basically (my understanding) it fakes the interfaced (oversimplification).

Chances are if it's not listed they won't touch it. However, put a new option in the support drop down and in caps put that "ITS ACTUALLY FOR XYZ..." and explain the issue. Sometimes you get lucky and they have old new stock or have an old head working there willing to fix it.

 

[IncredibleHat]

Success.

After noticing that I could get 'a generic something' to show up in the Device Manager by plugging the tuner card into one of the two "GPU" (8x, 16x) slots on the board.... I thought maybe I can force some drivers for that generic device. I knew the old ASUS machine that it works on, had to have the drivers, so I went on the hunt.

I located the driver installer package on that machine at:
C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\averbda6x_x64.inf_amd64_cb31e31549fa096b\

Then did the following:

• Zipped that up and drug it over to my problem rig (anywhere in documents was fine).
• Shut down.
• Put the tuner card into GPU SLOT 2 (the 8x one).
• Now seeing a new entry in Device Manager: "Other Devices -> Multimedia Device".
• Brought up "Update Driver" on it, then selected the folder above I had found on the other machine.
• It installed those.
• The "Multimedia Device" changed to "AVerMedia A188C PCIe Pure ATSC" in the correct category.
• Reboot.

At this point, SageTV now saw the two tuners as devices to record from, and clicking to watch some live tv, it tuned in right away and started playing the channel I was looking at.

As a side, at this point since it appears to be working, I decided to launch that "AVerMedia Assist Central.exe" .... it was like "Nope, no AverMedia devices found." Useless application. AverMedia replaced all their driver install pages, to download that useless "Assist Center". Would have saved me the trouble, had their support site, been supportive. Oh well.

Also after some digging, and conversing, it appears these MSI boards with their BIOS, hide away the ASPM type PCI settings. The MSI boards just have it enabled, with no way to disable it for legacy device support. The ASUS board BIOS has settings for it, and as a test, I was able to make the card "vanish" from device manager, by setting ASPM to "L1" and the pcie speed to "Gen 2". It would come back if I set it to "Gen 1" with ASPM enabled.... or if I just disabled ASPM (which is the default for ASUS BIOS).

Oh well, live n learn. It's all working now.... although not in a PCIe 1x slot (like it should be), but rather one of the bigger GPU slots. Not a real issue, since I won't be putting any dedicated GPU cards in this.

Some images:

The Drivers on the old machine:

View: https://imgur.com/GwOwzCq


The driver installer INF package:

View: https://imgur.com/NCKWEdF


The card where it should show up as:

View: https://imgur.com/bY6NKAP

 

[Paperdoc]

Congrats! Not an obvious solution - that took some smarts and work! I don't lnow if you can give yourself a Best Solution, but you deserve it. And thanks for posting this to help others with similar issues.

 

[IncredibleHat]

Congrats! Not an obvious solution - that took some smarts and work! I don't lnow if you can give yourself a Best Solution, but you deserve it. And thanks for posting this to help others with similar issues.

Naw, I've been told in the past I cant choose my own figured out solution as best answer. 🤷‍♂️ So I'll choose yours, so I can mark this as "Solved". 😊

 

[Paperdoc]

I did not realize you have to select a Best Solution to label a thread Solved. Odd, but I guess I am the unintended beneficiary. Thanks.