Reformatted, now problems with capturing

[Katscratch]

Ok so I did a routine reformat of my system to clean things up a bit. I reinstalled everything as it was before( or so I thought) but now I'm having problems. All of a sudden when I try to capture video I'm getting massive amounts of dropped frames and vsync errors. I'm using an internal AverMedia card to do my capturing. The video is being captured onto a 600 GB HDD.

The problem happens when I capture to either my SSD or HDD.

Before I reinstalled everything, it all worked perfectly with no dropped frames or sync errors.
I'm capturing from a VHS source. I even tried recapturing some of the previous home videos I did before with no problems and I still get dropped frames.

My system specs:

Windows 7 64-bit
Intel Core i7 950
6GB RAM
600 GB HDD
120 GB SSD
Video Card: GeForce GTX 580
MB: Evga x58 FTW3

Capture Card: AVerMedia AVerTV HD DVR MTVHDDVRR PCI-Express x1


Anyone have any ideas as to why this might be happening?

[TreeTops]

Did you also install the driver for your GTX580? (and all the other necessary drivers)

[Katscratch]

Yup, all the latest drivers are installed.

[sanlyn]

"routine" reformat? You mean, like, monthly?

Kidding aside, there's an information gap here. Is this a retail PC or one that you built or had built for you? How did you reinstall (external system media or OEM recovery partition?). Did you install all Windows updates and service packs? Was your graphics card physically installed when you ran the installation? Did you install chipset drivers for your motherboard and OS?

[Katscratch]

By routine reformat I mean once a year.

I built the PC myself. Windows was reinstalled using external media. All updates for Windows 7 and service packs have been successfully installed. The graphics card was physically installed. Chipset drivers are installed.

[sanlyn]

Seems as if you did it the right way. That being the case, without looking through your entire setup at everything you've installed, all anyone can do is guess. If your motherboard has a built-in graphics adapter, but you left your other cards or add-ins plugged in while running a cold reinstall, there's no telling what Win7 setup decided to install or not install in many respects. Most techs I know would recommend that a PC be re-installed with nothing connected to the PC except its drives, keyboard, mouse, network adapter, and monitor. All add-ons should be connected later, including graphics, audio, card readers, other PCI devices, etc. Otherwise, as I say, one can only start guessing.

[sanlyn]

Say, since you do this annually: did you evertry drive imaging software? After a fresh (cold) install, if everything works Ok and before you start adding goodies, make an image backup of your installed partition. An image backup can be restored in about 20 minutes or so. That would save a lot of time. You could make another image backup after installing most of your software and hardware drivers.

Most people would reserve one partition for their OS and program folders. All other data, documents, vids, etc., are on separate partitions.

[fritzi93]

Good advice. That's exactly how I do things.

[Bjs]

Generally to rule out such problems you should remove the avertv while doing the os and other device drivers install.

Then run the software package which came with the capture device, shutdown, install capture device, restart and allow system to detect and install the device drivers, and a final reboot.

I own several avermedia devices and its the only way to install them otherwise common issues such as dropped frames, etc, appear.

Just do the second part may resolve the problem without the need to redo the clean os reinstall.

[Katscratch]

Well after ruling everything else out I finally decided it was an issue with the card itself so I bought another one.

The new card works flawlessly. Heck it works better than the old one with 0 dropped frames for 30 minutes of footage. Uncompressed capturing. Hey I can even multi-task again!

Thanks for all the diagnostic suggestions