nVidia Driver Issues & MCE Crashes - Advice Needed Please

[LongView]

Just before I start here are my system specs (I've also posted about my experience building my first HTPC on these forums):

SilverStone LC11S-300 inc 300w PSU (Silver) Case
Silverstone RC01 PCI-E Riser Card for LC11
ASUS P5LD2-VM DH (mATX) Motherboard
Intel Celeron D 352 3.2GHz Socket 775 512Kb
TWIN2X1024A-6400 2x512MB 240-Pin DIMM XMS2-6400
Maxtor DiamondMax10 300GB SATA II 16MB Cache
XFX GeForce 7300GT 256MB DDR2 PCIE VGA DVI Passive
Hauppauge WinTV Nova-T 500 Dual digital DVB-T PCI TV card
Sony 18x DVD+/-RW 12X RAM Black Drive
NetGear WG111v2 USB2 54G Wireless Adaptor
Windows Vista Home Premium x64 Bit OEM

The system is great and recording programs, sleeping, waking up, allowing us to watch TV, DVD's and other content. There are just two niggles that I can't solve so I'm hopefull someone with more experience can help me (I've been building PC's for years but this is my first HTPC).

The Hauppauge drivers are working fine but I can't seem to use any x64 nVidia drivers above ForceWare 100.65 without live/recorded TV being choppy although sound is fine. Higher ForceWare drivers with the same tuner work fine on my main computer which is running a retail upgrade version of Vista Ultimate although its currently x86 due to one piece of hardware without x64 drivers.

The second issue is that going into the Video folder of MCE causes it to crash although if you can get into sub-folders quick enough its fine. That tells me its something to do with codecs and MCE trying to do its little previews within the folders. I am using the x64Components (v1.22) and I can watch the video files (xVid encoded) without issue. I have also set Media Player to the x64 bit version using the recommended switch. The same videos on my main PC do not cause the crash.

I'm guessing that both of these issues are being caused by a mix of x64 drivers and codecs but any advice would be great. I am going to try moving the video files out to see if that resolves the problem and then I'll try putting them back one folder at a time.

[paulm187]

Originally Posted by LongView

Just before I start here are my system specs (I've also posted about my experience building my first HTPC on these forums):

SilverStone LC11S-300 inc 300w PSU (Silver) Case
Silverstone RC01 PCI-E Riser Card for LC11
ASUS P5LD2-VM DH (mATX) Motherboard
Intel Celeron D 352 3.2GHz Socket 775 512Kb
TWIN2X1024A-6400 2x512MB 240-Pin DIMM XMS2-6400
Maxtor DiamondMax10 300GB SATA II 16MB Cache
XFX GeForce 7300GT 256MB DDR2 PCIE VGA DVI Passive
Hauppauge WinTV Nova-T 500 Dual digital DVB-T PCI TV card
Sony 18x DVD+/-RW 12X RAM Black Drive
NetGear WG111v2 USB2 54G Wireless Adaptor
Windows Vista Home Premium x64 Bit OEM

The system is great and recording programs, sleeping, waking up, allowing us to watch TV, DVD's and other content. There are just two niggles that I can't solve so I'm hopefull someone with more experience can help me (I've been building PC's for years but this is my first HTPC).

The Hauppauge drivers are working fine but I can't seem to use any x64 nVidia drivers above ForceWare 100.65 without live/recorded TV being choppy although sound is fine. Higher ForceWare drivers with the same tuner work fine on my main computer which is running a retail upgrade version of Vista Ultimate although its currently x86 due to one piece of hardware without x64 drivers.

The second issue is that going into the Video folder of MCE causes it to crash although if you can get into sub-folders quick enough its fine. That tells me its something to do with codecs and MCE trying to do its little previews within the folders. I am using the x64Components (v1.22) and I can watch the video files (xVid encoded) without issue. I have also set Media Player to the x64 bit version using the recommended switch. The same videos on my main PC do not cause the crash.

I'm guessing that both of these issues are being caused by a mix of x64 drivers and codecs but any advice would be great. I am going to try moving the video files out to see if that resolves the problem and then I'll try putting them back one folder at a time.

Try using Microsoft's nVidia drivers. My Vista Premium 32bit stuttered like crazy until I uninstalled nVidia's graphic card drivers and went with Microsofts drivers that you can download from Windows update.

Are you using the 32bit or 64bit media player codecs?

[LongView]

Originally Posted by paulm187

Try using Microsoft's nVidia drivers. My Vista Premium 32bit stuttered like crazy until I uninstalled nVidia's graphic card drivers and went with Microsofts drivers that you can download from Windows update.

Are you using the 32bit or 64bit media player codecs?

Thanks for the response and advice. The standard Microsoft drivers are very fuzzy when trying to navigate Windows although the MCE experience is fine. I can get away with using the ForceWare 100.65 driver package which gives me a better experience overall including MCE. I'm using the TV-Out into the S-Video connection on our CRT television.

I'm using the 64bit media player codecs and have updated the system to use the 64bit version of media player. I've not installed any additional 32bit codecs for the moment.