about a month ago i became the proud owner of a slightly used but free ati all-in-wonder radeon. while it didn't come with a cd, i figured i could just download the proper drivers from the ati website, grab the media center and get my pvr on. the install shouldn't take more than a couple hours... apparently i couldn't have been more wrong.
first and foremost i'm relegated to dial-up. after installing the card seven [that's right, seven] downloads ranging from five to eighteen megs awaited me. two of those downloads were from microsoft's page [directx nine and windows media encoder nine] and seeing as how the rain has made my phone service a bit sporradic i kept getting knocked offline. so starting at noon and giving my system about twenty reboots i finish installing everything right after the simpsons. that's right, eight and a half hours to download and install software to install a video card. well, at least it looks like everything is in and working properly...
so i hook up the coax from my antenna to the all-in-wonder, fire up the multimedia center for the first time and get... an error message. after running a diagnostic tool [helpfully provided by ati] on the card i get a report back that says "you need to install directx. oh, and the wdm capture drivers are erroring." so i reinstall directx and run the diagnostic again... still no dice. ugh. let's try reinstalling the wdm capture drivers and give the machine another reboot. nope, still an error there too... do i have any other options? well, i can download previous versions of the drivers drop back to the restore point i made before i installed the card and start over fresh.
oh wait, if i wanted to just grab previous versions of the drivers that still means another eighty megs of downloads. fuck it, i don't need a pvr in my pc that badly. tape based magnetic media will do me just fine.
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