Installing Hauppauge PVR-250 in Windows 7

I had such fun with this. NOT.

I spend a fruitless evening trying to get this to work.  The card isn’t certainly a new one, but it works, and it’s good enough for the occasional use that I give it. I rarely watch TV, but it’s useful to have for the occasions that I do want to watch something, and my wife has her head in one of the endless crime shows.

The driver CD that came with it is supposed to work with Xp and Vista (and other earlier OS’es too).

It worked fine when I installed it on an XP box, and last summer when I finally set up a Vista system it worked in that too. As practically everything else works just fine in Windows 7 without any hitch, I was expecting this to work as well.

I fired up Windows Media Center.

It asked me if I wanted to set up the TV Card,  or use existing settings, when I went to Live TV.  I chose the latter. It did its little circle dance for a few minutes, and then announced that there wasn’t a card installed.

No, big deal, I thought, I’ll have to re-install it.

I went to Live TV set up, and ran it.  Again, it told me no hardware found.

I then went to device manager. It told me that the hardware was present, and that the drivers were working correctly.

I updated them. I tried again. No hardware found.

I deleted them. I re-installed them. No hardware found.

I went to the Hauppauge site, and re-downloaded the drivers, and re-installed them. No hardware found.

I gave up and went to bed.

Next morning, I thought I’d have another quick go, and then admit defeat, and go look to get another card.

I googled around for help.

I read a few things that really weren’t helpful, or didn’t address my issue directly.

Then I found this link: http://hauppauge.lightpath.net/software/pvr250/pvr250_18_22037.exe

I downloaded it. I ran it. I tried setting up again. It works.

I can now control basic cable with Windows Media Center, and using the Guide,  make unattended recordings.

My next project is to look at the options for bringing Comcast HD to the computer. That’s for another time, and another article.

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