Althoug I have had no response to this post, i thought I would post the solution. following significant responses from the pc advisor forum, and with much scepticism I took the advice offered by a number of people on that forum - they told me that this fault is a known issue with pinnacle and advised me to forget it and buy a new card. I did so and bought a Packard bell card fitted it and bingo no more desync'd video and audio. I confess to being staggered - how any company can market a product with a known defect is beyond me - today I returned it to PC world and got my money back.