What I did was to install the card (physically) and then turn on the power and let it boot up and win7 x64 should find and install a driver automatically. Do not install anything from the cd that came with the card. Use only virtualdub with this card.

I installed the software and thought eh, i'll give the tv tuner software a try. It crashed the system.

Automated windows driver installation and strictly using virtualdub is the only way I've ever been successful. That being said, with laserdisc, it is quite a good card for capturing. There is the supposed agc problem but I believe that is only on vhs captures.

I'm pretty sure your pcie slots are active right out of the box. You'd have probably had to somehow disable them manually for them to be off.

The fact that you said you were initially getting a video feed into virtualdub showing laserdisc video and then later only a blackbox makes me think you might have changed the source from s-video to composite or vice versa or something similar and stopped getting a video feed because you weren't hooked up to the right input? You probably wouldn't even get a black box in virtualdub if the card wasn't working. I had switched the card over to s-video once and forgot and it took me a day to figure out why I couldn't get video.