To all frustrated souls...I have rediscovered a contact at Microsoft and have written to him asking for his help. He immediately was interested and asked me to describe the bug and send a description of it from an affected machine to the Feedback Hub.
I am unsure of what exactly he wants and I have already reverted to Windows 20279. I have asked him to provide further advice as to what I need to submit for Microsoft to be able to work on the problem.
I have also had a fairly formulaic conversation with someone from Hauppauge who was sure that the problem I described was impossible he said
"This doesn't make sense that its a Windows problem since the scanning
routines are pretty simple: the application tells the tuner to tune to a
particular frequency and then waits some time (usually 500 msec) for a
signal lock to be detected. If signal lock is detected, then the frequency
is added to the channel list"
He seems to think that's all that happens - not that a frequency number has to coincide with a signal for there to be an output - and that is someone from the manufacturer. We are truly doomed (if that doesn't get you, the virus
or US Politics will)!.
As you can tell my hope for a solution lay with Microsoft.