Elonex Artisan About To Be Thrown In Bin - plea for help :-(

JJ10

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Hi, I have one of the original Elonex Artisan's - with dual digital tuners.

Machine packed in at Christmas (missed all the Xmas movies) and it turned out to be the hard disk that had died - which to be fair had put up with with SERIOUS amounts of hard work in its 4-5 year life.

I put a new ESATA drive in which seemed to work OK, and installed XP Media Centre onto it (from a disk I had which didn't come with the Artisan).

From that point, I have never made much progress and the wife is starting to put her footdown and insist on a new PVR of some sort. Since the new HD went in, I have never been able to record or watch TV on the elonex, only play DIVX stuff.

Thing is, the Artisan was fantastic, and I don't think I will find anything as good - not to mention, it cost £1,000 and I don't want to bin it as I know the hardware is good (and I don't have £200-£300 for a new PVR either as I am not working at the moment).

The problems I have had all relate to drivers I think, have trawled the net and meddled for hours/days with it, it seems I just can't get the tuners to work, the rest of the system is also unstable, power management isn't as it was before (won't wake up from sleep) and it crashes when watching DIVX stuff occasionally which it never did before and sometimes just crashes when apparently doing nothing.

Question is, is there any kind soul out there who would be able to burn me an image of their dual tuner system somehow ? I would happily pay somebody for their trouble as it would be worth it to get it running again.
Or for that matter, is there a magic bullet to sorting the drivers? I have tried SO many drivers, combinations of removing drivers, removing card, adding cards etc etc etc etc it has never worked. MCE just says there either are no cards, or if it seems the cards, it can't find any channels.

A disk image or backup of just the std config would be an absolute life saver, can anyone help out before the wife puts her foot fully down? :lease:

Thanks in advance

John

PS. I have an XP MCE licence so that should be no issue.
 
Have you thought about trying Windows 7 on it? It's a much better Media Center experience, and the driver support 'out of the box' is excellent.

A quick Google shows it's possible.
 
Note sure this will be of any help ... but as Stiggy says I would go with Windows 7 MC .... all you might want/have to do is install 2gb ram (and run the x86 version).
 
I saw lots of posts about Vista being as tricky as xp to get working but never really considered win7, have you tried it on the Artisan?
I don't mind shelling out for a licence if it is known to be trouble free from the standard win7 install - it would be worth the cash (and if it works, more memory not an issue). Will remote control etc still work? Do I still need 3rd party codecs? Was gobsmacked that media centre in xp doesn't have the ones it needs to operate and you have to find some 3rd party ones- think perhaps codecs might have been half my problem.

Cheers for all your help
J
ps. Saw that other link cheers, wasn't much help unfortunately.
 
I can't say for sure that the remote will work, but I haven't seen any comments that it doesn't.

Windows 7 doesn't need any extra codecs for DVD or TV playback. It even copes with DivX out of the box.
 
I can't say for sure that the remote will work, but I haven't seen any comments that it doesn't.

Windows 7 doesn't need any extra codecs for DVD or TV playback. It even copes with DivX out of the box.

Well, we made progress. Win7 installed fairly well and painlessly. Everything seems to work now, but OH SO SLOWLY.

TV playback is very jerky, barely watchable - when the PC is doing nothing else. I realise Win7 has a larger footprint, but this machine used to be able to record two programs while watching a 3rd recorded program, so I know the machine can easily cope.

I have changed graphics cards drivers from win7 ones to vista ones from manufacturers web site. I am slightly reluctant to change tuner drivers as that is when my troubles started in the XP machine and I could never get it back to its original state.
Anyone any suggestions ? Would it be tuner drivers or other things?
I only have the std 1gig memory, but its not maxing out as far as I can see.

Cheers for everyone's help so far BTW.
 
Elonex Artisan - Ebuyer Forums this is the biggest and most comprehensive Elonex Artisan thread on the net. If you cant get the answers here, you aint lookin' lol. It has driver pages, upgrade pages, processor pages, it has pages of everything!

Dont sell it, look here! PS: I have one running XPMC. I wouldn't give it up for the world

Marti :smashin:
 
finally gave up, wife threw a strop and had to be a humax box which doesn't do half of what the old kit used and doesn't do what it does do half as well :facepalm:

I just didn't have time to get it working. The hardware was fine, I know that, just a driver issue. I am sure a bit of a tinker would have sorted it, it was such a good machine.

Machine going on Ebay soon I think unless anyone where wants to offer me a price.

All bits still good and working (including remote, keyboard egc), only the HD was replaced (with a bigger 1/2 gig one - henace the OS re-install). It currently has Windows7 on it (which I will leave on if the buyer wants it).

Email me offers.....
 
Hi steve, drop me a private msg with an offer, if it's a fair price, will FedEx it over. It is still sat in my office waiting to eBay but have so far been so busy, not had the time.
The "being busy" issue is the whole reason I never really got it going - I knew it could be done, just never had time to focus .....
Cheer
John
 
trading via pm is not allowed on these forums. please read the rules or you'll attract an infraction

the rules are there to protect our members, so please abide by them

if you wish to sell the item on these forums, then please use the classifieds
 
Oops sorry. Didn't realise. Won't happen again.
 
Steve, not sure how I progress this as I can't send a PM and you may not read the classified adds. I don't want to break more forum rules ,so perhaps emailing me outside the forum is the best way? Try [email protected]
Cheers

JJ
 
I take it you still havent read the rules. these rules are here to protect the members
 
I did read the rules last week, I take it I broke another one - but that I have to work out what it is......
 
well I didnt give another infraction :)

basically trading outside of the trading forums is a no-no. there are serial scammers out there who target forums like this and do things via email or pm, and then when it goes south the burned party then expects us to do something about it, which we clearly cant. We do our best to help resolve matters when done via the trading forums but cant do anything otherwise.

I'm not saying there will be problems, and I'm not saying either party are scammers or otherwise. We just take trading outside the forums when the deal was instigated in the forums seriously.

cheers
graham
 
Hi Graham, I totally support your position and understand you have to take care and take care of your users too. I am not wanting to take the P***. Its just that if Steve isn't a regular forum user (which he doesn't appear to be) then posting a reply to the forum isn't going to get a response, hence the PM I sent him so that he at least he knows there is a thread to reply to.

Will try my best to comply - and appreciate not getting a red card :):)
 
If he "subscribes" to a thread he'll get an email I think??
 
well if he does, he well get more than one email ha ha :)
 

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