A PowerTIG 250EX and problems

The welder I had previously was a simple 200 amp DC welder and everything was going decent but I wanted to upgrade to the 250EX.That's where the problems started.
Using the same bottle of argon and electrode as before I now can't reliably start an arc with DC. The weird part is that I can start the arc on the old welding table, on a piece of stainless steel laying on the table and on a piece of copper, the arc in the copper is dead stable, on the stainless a little less so and a little strange on the table with long arcs that appear to come almost from the collet. The only way I can reliably start an arc on the stainless piece that I'm attempting to weld is to warm the electrode by starting an arc on the copper and then quickly moving to the part.
The pieces I'm working on are freshly machined and washed down with acetone and I've gone so far as to clamp the ground directly to the part. I've tried from 10 - 20 cf argon, base current at 140 and using the foot pedal or lower and the torch switch. The electrode seems to have an etch right up to the collet from the starting arc.
I'm not blaming the welder yet, the last time I used a welder with half the capabilities of this one, the first Apple computer had just come on to the market, any idea what I have done ?

Post a clear picture of the welder so we can see the settings, please.

And the collet and weld/material.

I don't think I need to preface this with 'I'm not a welder, but' these are the settings I used as well as others. I tried using the torch trigger, both 2T and 4T, and the foot pedal 2T only.

Attachment 13078Attachment 13079Attachment 13080

Verify that argon is flowing out of the cup.
Have the tungsten about 1/8" from the material to be welded.

Definitely is argon and it's 'clean' argon, I was using it with the last welder and it worked well. The old welder was a very basic Chinese 200 amp DC welder and it worked. I was thinking that I had something wrong but what is confusing to me is that it works very well on the copper but almost not at all on my part. The other thing that I found strange was that the HF start was almost like a 1920s or 30s movie where they had 20 foot lightning bolts. One time when it started there was a white smoke that came out of the torch when I tried to initiate an arc as well. Is it possible the torch is NG?

Anything is possible but I haven't seen a bad torch on one of these. I'm gonna have to leave this one to the tech support guys but I'm sure it'll be something simple.
Tech support normally works monday through friday but may show up on the weekend from time to time.

Thanks anyway, I'm in Canada so I'll give Duncan a call when I return from vacation.