W2v TV Tuner problem

Except for installing games and copying my music over this machines software is unaltered.(MCE 2005)
I am getting a freezing and pixelating picture (think satellite TV right before a storm).
My sound drops sometimes and will not return until I change the channel.
Definitely not my cable, 50 or so channel analog. My desktop has an x700 256 VIVO (run through a VCR) working just fine.
There is also a 3 to 5 second delay between the 2, but i attest that to the signal being run through MCE's DVR function.
I figured I would try here first before calling Justin's tech support... *grins at Justin*
Its been doing it from the start, but not as noticeable.
I am thinking about doing a re-install of the OS and drivers, if anything, just to get rid of the partition. What is the reasoning behind a 54.5 gig FAT32 partition with the OS on it, and a 36.2 gig NTFS? (and losing almost 10Gb due to formatting? seems excessive)
I have been building and repairing machines for several years, thats why I am hesitant to call tech support, I figure there is enough idiots looking for the "any" key this time of year!
Does anybody have any ideas? ASUS's support site was no help (imagine that).
Thanks in advance!

BDR

 

... call Asus. The pixelation is because analog tv's native res is 800 x 600... so if you are running it full screen through your notebook (which is running at more than double that). .... you'll get that.

... as far as sound dropping and frames dropping..... what does your system resources look like? Asus' tech support in the US consists of about 4 people.... 4 inteligent people who know these notebooks...... I hate to put it this way, but they're getting a good chunk of change to warranty the ensembles and you really should hit them up for that. Doesn't sound like "hardware failure" or anything... but more like software issues... Did you recently do any windows updates or even W2 drivers/software/bios updates?

 

I think I mis-stated, the pixelation is from the picture freezing... which it also does in windowed mode.
Resources seem to be fine with ehshell.exe taking 10-15% of CPU and 100k memory.
Yeah, I have installed the windows critical updates and the sound drivers from Asus's website, thats why I was considering wiping it and starting from scratch...
Any thoughts on the partitioning?

BDR

 

bdr
First asus will ask to to start from scratch so you may as well start now and be ready for it. Their rma dept may have 4 people manning the phones but only 2 that do the actual support and prolly 5-10 others that do the actual repair work and proccessing. Needless to say the communications between these various people is less then optimal. Dont be so surprised at the level of phone expertise. Some of these guys only have less then a few years behind their notch belt. You cant take away speedy turn around and air shipment but everything else is just as expected. What did you expect? Having certain dealers take full care of their whitebook line allowed them to get their foot in the door with ensembles. You will find alot of times rma to cali is the only solution as the support is not very able to troubleshoot. Nobody here needs to imagine what you experienced. It think its common knowledge by now that their top dealers have the whitebooks covered alot better then asus covers their ensembles. :asus:
That sign does not mean we endorse their level of expertise. It means we endorse their products. Try not to raise your expectations when buying. You wont get any warranty like you do from dell (business side) which you normally pay 500$ over sticker, Infact they dont even sell that. There something for marketing to think over. If you want top notch service custom whitebooks is the way to go but ofcourse you will not find a w2 in the line up

 

Eddie, I know you'll be ther first to admitt you don't sell many or push many ensembles...... and we certainly know we get a lot of calls from people you tried to talk out of them, but what the hell are you doing bashing their support? I understand some of what you're saying and agree..... but Asus' techs in the US do know what the hell their doing and regardless of what you think, I don't think you have enough experience with the ensembles to know how Asus deals with them... and I don't mean that with any disrespect, but a couple of the guys over there have gone above the call of duty for us and I'm sure you and others... on top of the end-users they have to deal with for their ensemble line. I told BDR to speak with them simply because this is their area of expertise and the bottom line for most of us is ---- their getting the warranty cut off the ensembles, so really it's thier JOB to do it.

.... Now I will go as far to say that some times a lot of those guys at Asus want to tell end-users that "if your dealer is good, they should be able to cover this and that" .... but really those comments get under my skin, because, again.. they're getting the warranty money as part of what they charge us.... for us to warranty it would be dumb on our part and for them to get the money and to try to put it off on us does take a lot of nerve. But, in terms of their Knowledge - someone like Albert, who I've personally dealt with for over five years now - totally deserves all the credit in the world for how he's helped us in situations where we might get stuck or our customers might have a problem. Those guys are trained simply on everything from the chipset up and know how to both fix and diagnose basically everything and they also have the benefit of learning from Asus worldwide as issues come up in various countries, they learn about them and how to take care of them......

... Now if this is something they haven't seen before and they can't reproduce or they think may come down to a hardware problem - of course they're going to want to see the system so they can fix it and figure it out for the next person. It's just that we all know for a major computer company Asus has probably the least issues of any and it mainly comes down to the parts they use and what components make up their award winning motherboards. So, if you have a problem - you're most likely alone. That isn't good for you, but good new for everyone else. They'll take care of you, but the problem you have is probably only shared by a few and it's not one of those things a bigger comapny might find as a flaw and then has a paragraph of how to fix it for any customer who calls in...... Look at it how you will, but the few people Asus has here in the US in terms of technicians are very skilled.

 

uuuh i think you took it just a little out of context. I never implied you should take bdr's ensemble and do the warranty. That would be very surprising if you did. I would not. Ensemble is asus warranty not ours. Never bashed their support either. Just stating the obvious. They need help there. They also need to offer some kind of premium warranty which i am 100% confident will raise their satisfaction rate. If you look around there are too many people complaining that they dont get the support they would like for their ensembles. We do about 1 to 50 ratio if not more ensembles to whitebooks. I never try to talk people out of ensembles but i always offer whitebooks as an alternative and sometimes vise versa. But ye i guess you right i do promote whitebooks more often. Yes you are 100% right they go well above and beyond for us (dealers). Thats very true. But i get more complaints from ensemble customers then i would like to see which sometimes forces me to pick up the repair and support costs for their warranty. Their support is very skilled prolly 100x more skilled then any other. But when it comes to their top dealers their end user support has lots of room for improvement by comparison. I was comparing them to their top dealers not anyone else. Thats not bashing thats constructive criticism

 

The few calls you get from customers that called me first are comming to you becuase i sent em your way or cuz they dont like my accent. In terms of ensemble the w3v and v6v are the only ensembles i am familiar with everything else i send your way. Wheres my thank you and apology? I ll come down to bumblephrak and stomp out ur unit.,, verheat:

 

No, that's not what I thought you meant.... I just took it as you put it, but it's not a big deal. I'm not looking to give you a thank you or an apoligy for anything..... I couldn't tell you how many poeple came to us from you, but from what I'm told by my sales manager is you want to push them away from ensembles more than you send them our way. I'm not sure of your reasoning, but if you're not going to stock them - take them off your site. If you want to replace them with a "go to proportable" link, we'll set you up like anyone else on a commision basis.... that might actually work out better for you, who knows.

.... well I don't know exactly how to understand your thinking...... No one is getting sent to India for support by people who can't turn on a computer and have a phone name of "bob" or "andy" just to sound more "american"....... With Asus, since there are only a handful of them, they have a full plate everyday and they are responsible people who take problems into their own hands and if they can't deal with it - Asus is in trouble.... they ARE their line of support. At worst, it may take them a day to get back to sometime, but that is still good compared to other places. It's true that most of the dealers of the notebooks have better support set up, but realistically Asus never wanted the role they have now. Where they screwed up was actually supporting the ensembles, but they had to because a lot of places that are selling them just sell things and have no means of support themselves. However, one thing we are looking to change for next year is to be one of the service centers that Asus wants to set up. That will change the whole pricing structure and with more money coming in to us instead of going into Asus' pocket, means we can control support a lot more efficiently and do everything in house and ignore Asus for even more. They make a great product, but they can't do everything and that's true of any company. Their motherboard support side has always been horrible and it's mainly because they don't have problems with their systems, so they don't have 100's of people just set up to fix things...... But then again, their percentage of problems is so low that most people will never have a problem and never have to deal with them ----- that says a lot about the product and that's what you're really buying. It's not to say they refuse to help or fix or replace a problem unit, you just have to take a little more time to take care of it. So really..... they aren't bad. There are places that just tell you to tough luck and we're not going to help you..... Asus just hasn't figured out a way to outsource support to a company that just does that. That's ideal and it can be done without going to India......... right now the people in the valley in california are getting top dollar to do what they're doing... outsource it to the mid-west and they could probably hire 33% more people for the same price.

 

G2p, thank you for that commercial interlude, but it still has no bearing on how to solve my problem. LOL
Justin, you have a top-notch operation, and the simple fact you invest the time and effort to reply to posts, even from people who didnt buy from you, speaks volumes.

It was a driver or something, I restored the system (non-partitioned I might add) and TV is working fine now.
I will pay more attention to the TV function after updating drivers to see if I can pin down the culprit. When I find it, I will let you know.
As far as ASUS is concerned, I have dealt with them before and never had any trouble,(except their website support really blows) and I have owned ASUS products exclusively for the last 4 years. The brand name was a major factor in my purchase decision. These boards were a major factor in who I purchased from.
I chose PROPortables.
nuff said.

BDR

 

.... Keep an eye on those drivers and what's causing the problems.... one thing you can usually do with Asus products is automatically rule out hardware failure.... that's usually going to be the last thing in the world that's going to happen to you. That alone is enough to have some piece of mind that some where along the lines some driver or piece of software didn't like something else and try to look there. Just keep restore points and try to keep an eye on things. I know a lot of times it's not something people think about till after there is a problem, but it is an important thing to keep on your mind.

 

Same goes to you and whitebooks. If you want to replace them with a go to g2p link i can set u up the same way. A wise man once said "you will never understand what you dont have if you have it all".......

 

Well since the last year of sales is roughly slip 50/50.... I don't think so.... but then again, I don't sit push customers away from our custom systems either... which was my point to begin with. One day you may be Asus' Premier Partner and you'll understand what a great benefit having completely custom systems available as well as complete, pre-packaged systems can really do for you. When you can put out twice the systems, with about half of them taking up the time of your build crew, it helps them be more productive and helps keep the amount of staff smaller. On a downside, having to keep the stock of every unit at a certain daily level can absolutely suck, but as long as everything is selling well - it's not a problem.

 

Yeah i think the convo became an argument shortly after it became a how big is my D|@% match. Premier partner is not about a trophy its about knowing your place. I know mine i also know that having the status bestowed on us would mean nothing more then what i know now. Kind of like being crowned a night. Sure it can feel good. But not every king was a knight.