Graphics card upgrade crashes Media Center

Bungletron

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Howdy,

Firstly, love the forums, long time listener, first time caller.

I had a quick search around but could not find anything specific. I have a HTPC running Vista Home Premium 32 Bit. I was running Media Center with no issues until I upgraded the graphics card to a Sapphire HD 5670 (Scan.co.uk: Sapphire HD 5670 Graphics Card 512Mb - 11168-02-20R) in order to get audio over HDMI and better performance.

I had uninstalled the old driver and card (an Asus EAH3650 Silent Magic) and installed the new card and driver, everything else appeared fine until I openned Media Center. Now everytime any video is played (tv tuner, video file or DVD) in Media Center, it crashes within seconds, sometimes going into a crash/restart loop with this error (the rather patronising solution offered by Windows Help, to keep my computer updated via Windows Update, was useless):
Product
Media Center

Problem
APPCRASH

Date
24/11/2010 08:59

Status
Solution Available

Description
Stopped working

Problem signature
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: ehshell.exe
Application Version: 6.0.6000.16386
Application Timestamp: 4549b55e
Fault Module Name: atiumdva.dll
Fault Module Version: 8.14.10.283
Fault Module Timestamp: 4cc78550
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 0010ecf9
OS Version: 6.0.6002.2.2.0.768.3
Locale ID: 2057

It appears this is an ATI driver issue, however I have uninstalled and reinstalled the ATI Catalyst driver (V. 10.11) several times to no avail. I have also updated all the other hardware drivers and bios (the rest of the PC runs off an Asus P5KPL-AM board and the only other card is the Compro e700 dual dvb tuner), which, as I suspected, did not help either. The issue is specifically video and Media Center, Media Center will play audio files without crashing and I can play video using MPC, Windows Media Player, BBC iPlayer, 4oD, nothing else I have tried has crashed. I think I may try and find an older ATI driver but does anyone else have any clues?
 
Looks like a DXVA problem from the dll mentioned. You could try searching and seeing what Google says with atiumdva.dll crash. What I would try is;
A) Update Direct-X to June 2010
B) Uninstall the Catalyst suite (select everything)
C) Delete the AMD/ATI folders present in Program Files or Program Files (x86)
D) Install Catalyst but choose custom install and untick the WMV/VC-1 hardware acceleration pack

See if it still crashes after that.
 
Try removing the old graphics driver with "driver cleaner" before reinstalling in case the add remove programs leaves anything behind.
 
Try removing the old graphics driver with "driver cleaner" before reinstalling in case the add remove programs leaves anything behind.
I actually used drivercleaner.net to obliterate the ATI driver as part of my uninstall, it made no difference :(

A) Update Direct-X to June 2010
B) Uninstall the Catalyst suite (select everything)
C) Delete the AMD/ATI folders present in Program Files or Program Files (x86)
D) Install Catalyst but choose custom install and untick the WMV/VC-1 hardware acceleration pack
The idea of turning off the hardware acceleration wasn't appealing to me although I am certain it would have worked (I had been express installing the catalyst drivers and had looked for some time for some options to turn hardware acceleration off in order to troubleshoot, cheers for enlightening me), the main reason being the PC otherwise runs very well with hardware acceleration on, and my upgraded card is rated to do this even better!

Many thanks for the suggestions, in the end rather than do a clean install to see if the hardware acceleration would work I bit the bullet and opted to buy Windows 7 Upgrade (downloaded on Microsoft Store at 15% off, plus cashback!), hey presto: problemo vanisho. I'd never used Media Center on 7 before, it appears to be a good improvement anyway so no biggie in the end, thanks again.
 
Unless your playing WMV files then disabling that option shouldn't make any difference other than the CPU decoding WMV's, in fact it seems a recent addition wasn't always there in the drivers. But you sorted it in the end anyway.
 

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