If like me you have been told of, or have had first hand experience of, the disappointment that flows over you when you realise your beloved Winfast capture card doesn’t work in the shiny new OS Windows 7 x64, then you’ll probably be searching furiously for an answer to resuscitate your loved one! Look no further here is my solution…

First, A Warning!

I have to stress that the following instructions are not guaranteed to work, I am not responsible if they cause any damage to your computer. However if followed correctly they should work fine.

Why Does It Happen?

Well Windows 7 blocks the main conexant capture driver that is used by some Winfast capture cards as, apparently, it is unstable & has been known to cause irreparable damage to your system (software, not hardware). It’s never happened to anyone I know though, but that is the official reason for it being blocked.

How Do I Unblock It?

Well I’ve collected a few different things I read around the web & which finally lead to me getting it working. First you will need to download a few things. Here is a list of the things you need:

  • Modified Winfast Driver: http://tw1965.myweb.hinet.net/Leadtek.htm
  • Driver Enforcement Disable Tool: http://www.ngohq.com/home.php?page=Files&go=cat&dwn_cat_id=34

Ok now you have those lets start.

  1. Extract the modified Winfast driver you downloaded for your capture card to somewhere like the Desktop.
  2. Press the windows button (Start Button), R-Click on Computer & press Manage. Then click Device Manager.
  3. Now find the Winfast driver with the yellow exclamation mark, R-Click & press Update Driver Software.
  4. Now click Browse My Computer, then Let Me Pick From A List, then Have Disk & pick the extracted driver from your Desktop.
  5. Click the driver and hit next. It will install the driver & when the install has finished it will say the driver can’t be used due to having no signature. We’ll sort that out next.

That is the first problem, which was the driver being blocked, sorted thanks to the modified driver. Now we have to get around the fact that the driver is unsigned, which in a 64-bit OS is a big problem.

  1. Open the program you downloaded from ngohq.com. Agree to the license & then pick Enable Test Mode.
  2. Now pick Sign A System File & type the file path to the modified winfast driver which is normally this:

    C:\Windows\System32\drivers\wfavsvid.sys

  3. Finally if you don’t want a horrible “Windows Test Mode” watermark to be on your desktop pick Remove Watermark.
  4. This will take you to a website, download the file extract it & run the one that matches your OS then follow the instructions.

Restart your computer & all should be great. You should be able to run Windows Media Center & get access to your tuner, and if like me you have a DTV2000 H you’ll get a nice suprise when you realise you can use both analogue & DVB-T in Windows 7. You were restricted to DVB-T in Vista. Also for those that want to use it Winfast PVR2 seems to work fine.

I hope that helps someone. :) I don’t know if this is a problem in the 32-bit version of Windows 7, if it is I think the instructions are the same except I’m not sure if the driver signature enforcement is a problem. Let me know if this is a problem in Windows 7 32-bit & if this fix works for that too.

Thanks: Thank you to http://tw1965.myweb.hinet.net & ngohq.com for making the driver, and the tool. Without them I would have gone mad trying to get my capture card working.

Update: It seems some people (well actually one person) don’t agree with installing non-WHQL drivers on their computers. That’s fine it is up to you whether having your cap card working, as it doesn’t seem like Leadtek are going to release a Win 7 driver, is more important that installing a non-WHQL driver. Remember the only thing that is different about the driver is that it has had it’s name changed to bypass Windows 7′s driver blocking. I’ve been running it for about 2 month now with no problems & my cap card works great. Remember it’s your choice.