No Tuner Available

[twupny]

I am having issues with McAfee Firewall (Security Center 9.3), Windows Vista/Media Center, and my ATI TV Wonder Digital Cable Tuner running on a DELL XPS 420 system.

The problem is that after approximately 9 months of problem-free use, suddenly I began to get the message "No Tuner Available" everytime I attempted to watch live TV via Windows Media Center. After chat sessions with Dell technicians, and searches of the ATI knowledge base, I still had no solution. I then happened across the following post on the Dell Community Forums:
http://en.community.dell.com/forums/t/19264521.aspx

The basic gist of that post is that there is a conflict between the McAfee firewall and Media Center. I found that I could solve the problem by disabling the McAfee firewall and rebooting. Re-enabling the firewall does not cause the problem to return, however processing updates from McAfee does.

One of the posters on the Dell forum thread noted above, said that McAfee had provided some settings adjustments that seemed to solve the problem. Can anyone here provide the nature of the setting changes required to resolve this problem permanently?

[exbrit]

I have the same ATI card and got those same issues until I updated to the latest ATI Catalyst software for that tuner card (from the AMD/ATI website).

It was nothing whatsoever to do with McAfee.

[twupny]

Thanks Ex-Brit, for the input. What you say may well be true, but my (and others) symptoms sure seem to imply otherwise. This is not necessarily to say that there is anything wrong with McAfee, maybe just that I need to tweak a setting or two.

One of the first things I tried was downloading and installing the latest version of the tuner's firmware. I assume this is what you mean by "ATI Catalyst software". It had no effect on the problem. But on at least three occasions since then, I have been able to relieve the problem by doing nothing more than disabling the firewall and rebooting. Rebooting alone has never caused the problem to disappear. As for what causes the problem to reappear, I am only speculating about McAfee updates based on others stated suspicions, and my own anecdotal evidence. Obviously, since there has always been a substantial time lag between occurrences, there are other things that could be the trigger. I will do some experimenting by requesting updates to see if I can nail that down a little better.

[exbrit]

Have you checked in Security Center if any applications are being blocked?

Double-click the taskbar icon to open SC
Click Advanced Menu (bottom left)
Click Configure (left)
Click Internet & Network (top left)
Click Advanced (right)
Click Program Permissions (left)

Check all the items in the right-hand list.

[r43527]

I too have a Dell XPS420 and had the same problem with my ATI external Digital Cable Tuner. The solution of turning off McAfee firewall resolved my issue too. Before I did this I tried installing the latest firmware for the device. I don't believe ATI catalyst has anything to do with the ATI cable tuner.

The problem is that the external cable tuner is treated by windows as a network device. I think this is why the firewall software is causing the problem. I looked into the firewall settings and all programs have full access, particularly Media Center. I would hope McAfee can get an ATI Digital Cable TUner and try to reproduce the problem so they can come up with a solution.

[twupny]

No applications are blocked.

Here is a chronology of some experimenting I have just done:
1. View Live TV in Media Center successfully
2. Close Media Center
3. Open Security Center and remove program permissions from ehshell.exe (MediaCenter), which I had added earlier thinking it might have something to do with it.
4. Close Security Center
5. Attempt to view live TV, but get Tuner Not Available error.
6. Add permissions back for ehshell.exe
7. Attempt to view live TV, same error.
8. Reboot
9. Attempt live TV, same error
10. Disable firewall in Security Center
11. Reboot
12. Live TV now works
13. Enable firewall
14. Live TV still works

[exbrit]

I thought we were talking about internal TV tuner cards...now we have an external one...?

I think it's best you connect with Technical Support Chat as they can do a "hands-on" approach which we can't here.

Link at top left of page or in my signature. If the first level of support doesn't get an answer ask them to escalate the issue to a higher level.

[exbrit]

Addendum: There was a problem reported a while back and it turned out that it was SiteAdvisor browser add-on that was causing the issue, not the firewall.

I only just remembered this, sorry.

The thread is here: http://community.mcafee.com/showthread.php?t=224313&highlight=ATI+TV

What version of Siteadvisor are you using? Click just to the right of the toolbar icon and select "About".

[twupny]

As far as I can tell, I don't have Site Advisor installed.

[exbrit]

Then I would go the technical support route anyway.