7 replies to this topic

[jlove]

This started on a thread that was called something like "What's wrong with Roxio". I tagged some of my problems onto a posting by someone else and there was at least one comment from a knowledeable participant suggesting that is bad methodology (which  I agree with), so I'm starting a new topic.

The other thread took me to the point of reinstalling my O/S, and I don't see any reason to re-hash all of that. This therefore begins with issues that have arisen as part of a complete re-install.

Since the sorts of problems I"m experiencing are often related to hardware and/or device drivers, let me offer the following. This is a modest computer but with decent resources: an Athlon 64 bit 3200+ processor, 2G of RAM, and vast amounts of available disk space. The video card is modest (NVIDIA GEForce FX5200).

After the melt-down described elsewhere, I had a professional service reinstall my O/S and I have refreshed all the drivers, etc.

The good news is that the worst aspects of the problems I had described are gone. Roxio proceeded with a normal installation, all of my CD and DVD drives are recognizable both to my system in general and Roxio modules, and I was able to do a few simple chores in Roxio modules without issue.

The first inkling that everything had not been fixed occurred with the "DVD Disk Copy module". That module was able to copy a simple DVD (4.7G) from one DVD device to another. But when I tried to use the copy routine that uses the same drive for both read and copy, a warning box popped up informing me that I did not have enough cache disk space to permit this. The box instructed me to choose a different disk location in the tools/options menu. The whole issue was odd since I have tons of available disk, but I dutifully opened tools/options and clicked on a different drive. Same error message. In fact, no many how many other places I tried to set up the cache, and with up to 200G of free space on some of them, I keep getting told I don't have enough space.

I thought this might have something to do with permissions, but no other application has any problem installing or writing to my drives, so there must be something else going on.

There are two other problems with the same module. The first is just cosmetic--when the disk copier module starts up the DVD skin is crammed into a space half the size it needs, and some of the option dialog boxes are not easily reachable because the dialog box isn't being drawn properly.  This did not happen after my first installation (before the great melt-down). As I said this is just cosmetic but I mention it because it might be related to other installation issues.

The second is a real problem. With Creator 7 and my first forrays into Creator 9, the DVD Copier program would inform me when a dual layer disk was being copied and ask me whether I would  like to compress it to fit on a single layer disk. Since the reinstall, this dialog box does not appear and it seems that the only way it will let me copy a dual layer disk is if I put a dual layer blank in.

Thanks for all assistance...

--Jack

[ggrussell]

HAve you changed any of the Windows default display settings? Make sure the display is at 96dpi / normal fonts.  I use 120dpi and don't have any problems though.

[jlove]

ggrussell, on Oct 29 2006, 01:23 PM, said:

HAve you changed any of the Windows default display settings? Make sure the display is at 96dpi / normal fonts.  I use 120dpi and don't have any problems though.

I had to refresh my memory on where this was located--"advanced" button on one of the display properties. Nope, it reads "96 dpi". But I did play around with screen resolution in an effort to cure the dialog box issue, and several different settings produced no better results. I'm using 1024 x 768 at the moment and "high 32 bit" color.

An update on the weirdness with "insufficient" disk space. Even though the disk copier refuses to copy in single disk mode, it seems quite happy to copy the DVD via capture to the same disk that allegedly has insufficient space. I discovered this by choosing the "video compilation" tab instead of the "CD and DVD copy" tab.

Thanks again,

--Jack

[jlove]

This is pretty baffling, but the problem seems to have just gone away.

I called the Roxio toll-free support line and got through right away. Once I had a technician on the line, I started up the DVD Movie copier and lo and behold, no screen distortion, it looked fine and I could see all the boxes.

Then I put in a movie and the skin appeared normally. Finally, I copied it using the 9G to 5G compressor and it worked beautifully.

I have no idea why it suddenly decided to work, but I will be happy if just continues to do so...

Thanks again to those of you who tried to help me.

--Jack

[jlove]

Wrap up:

Using Roxio v7 I had experienced no problems. Subsequent to upgrading to Creator 9, my DVD and CD drives disappeared from Windows. I attempted the Roxio endorsed solution to this problem which has been known for quite some time, but it did not work. I was unable to reach Roxio phone service, and Roxio's email support was limited to telling me to try the same registry fix I had already tried without success.

The DVD/CD drives were restored to Windows only after a complete O/S reload. Roxio installed with no reported errors or glitches (but that was also the case before the crash). In initial testing, the Roxio modules I ran all worked with the exception of DVD disk copier. That module loaded with an odd screen presentation and behaved unpredictably when various DVDs were mounted for copying.

On my second effort I was able to contact Roxio telephone support with quite reasonable contact time. To discuss the problem, I needed to load the module, but it loaded properly with good screen results and no issue copying a DVD.

It would be tempting to say that the problem simply repaired itself, but there is reason to suspect a better cause. An inspection of my logs shows that the Windows update agent was quite busy the night between my futile attempt to run the software and the day when I was able to reach tech support. So I think the most reasonable explanation for the sudden improvement is that one of the patches downloaded by Windows update was involved. The lesson I would present to the community is that after doing an O/S install, visit update.microsoft.com and download all O/S security and other patches before attempting to use Roxio.

Finally, despite the appearance of victory here, I won't declare it until I have had a month or two of good performance. The reason is that Roxio was working fine and then suddenly it wasn't. My read of the various other messages here tells me that many people are experiencing similar glitches, so I think we'll just have to see.

Best regards to all, and thanks for all the suggestions that have been made over the past couple of weeks.

--Jack

[jlove]

Just to let everyone know that after the various woes posted here, the ultimate solution of reinstalling my O/S prior to installing Creator 9 has worked. I've been making music and video disks quite nicely, although I plan to be asking some more usage questions to the wonderful volunteers here.

One other thing--through trial and error I've discovered that some of my worst problems have to do with damaged CD or DVD disks. Creator doesn't have any elegant way to inform you that things aren't going well, so my advice is that if you have success with some projects and then later have some odd things turn up, try rebooting and using a different disk.

Once you get it to work, this is a nice product.

-- Jack

[grandpabruce]

jlove, on Dec 22 2006, 08:58 AM, said:

Just to let everyone know that after the various woes posted here, the ultimate solution of reinstalling my O/S prior to installing Creator 9 has worked. I've been making music and video disks quite nicely, although I plan to be asking some more usage questions to the wonderful volunteers here.

One other thing--through trial and error I've discovered that some of my worst problems have to do with damaged CD or DVD disks. Creator doesn't have any elegant way to inform you that things aren't going well, so my advice is that if you have success with some projects and then later have some odd things turn up, try rebooting and using a different disk.

Once you get it to work, this is a nice product.

-- Jack

I don't know why you had to do the Format C:\ when you lost your drives.  I don't know what "Roxio endorsed" solution you tried, but the losing of the opticals is a Microsoft thing, and they do have the Upper and Lower filters solution, which works in most cases.

[Tom at Roxio]

jlove, on Dec 22 2006, 06:58 AM, said:

Just to let everyone know that after the various woes posted here, the ultimate solution of reinstalling my O/S prior to installing Creator 9 has worked. I've been making music and video disks quite nicely, although I plan to be asking some more usage questions to the wonderful volunteers here.

One other thing--through trial and error I've discovered that some of my worst problems have to do with damaged CD or DVD disks. Creator doesn't have any elegant way to inform you that things aren't going well, so my advice is that if you have success with some projects and then later have some odd things turn up, try rebooting and using a different disk.

Once you get it to work, this is a nice product.

-- Jack

Jack,
I'm glad to hear that you got everything working.  Thanks for posting your follow-up messages letting everyone know what was needed to solve the problem.

Easy Media Creator can do a lot of things, with audio, video, data recording, etc.  To do all of these things Creator needs to access every piece of hardware - drives, sound card, video and interfaces (USB, Firewire, etc.).  Creator relies on a solid OS installation and bug-free drivers, and it isn't always easy to where the problem lies.  

Thanks for providing the feedback that lets us know where the problem was and how you fixed it.

Tom