Convert CDs locks up entire PC

[eckert]

I'm positive this is a Vista-specific problem, since I installed the same EMC9 from the same purchased Roxio CD on my recently-reformatted XP machine and my new Vista machine. The problem is only with Vista.

 

I decided to convert my CD collection to MP3 files on my hard disk. No problem. Most of the time. The Gracenote logo shows up, the track names fill in, life is good. But for 3 of the first 20 CDs I tried, Roxio locks up. It hangs. The Gracenote logo doesn't show up until I eject the CD. I left it four hours just to be sure!

 

The strange thing is that OTHER applications, like Windows Explorer and even the Task Manager, also hang. As long as Roxio is waiting for the track titles, nothing else can function. Ejecting the CD always clears up the problem but I never get album or track titles.

 

I installed the 9.1.075 upgrade from their website, NOTHING CHANGED. I made sure Drag-to-Disc isn't running on startup. NOTHING CHANGED.

 

This is a Media Center PC, and that software is quite able to play the CD, with track titles, and view cover art, etc. If it is playing when I start Roxio's "Convert CD" utility, however, Media Center abruptly stops playing and doesn't respond until I eject the CD and kill Roxio.

 

Any ideas? Things to try? HELP!

 

Steve

[eckert]

Steve, I think 2 posts talking of your bad luck is enough.

 

It is not luck. It is bad. When a conversation stops, isn't it OK to mention that?

 

Steve

[Tom at Roxio]

Steve,

Chances are it has something to do with a GraceNote conflict. You might try uninstalling Rhapsody and/ Real Player to see if this resolves the problem.

 

Windows Media Player doesn't use GraceNote for CD identification... so it won't cause this problem.

 

Tom

[eckert]

Thanks for jumping in!!

 

Do you have Napster installed? If not, do you have any other media software installed?

 

Nothing that wasn't bundled with Vista. Before I deleted and re-installed 9.1 (which DOES require first installing 9.0 and letting 9.1 uninstall 9.0 before installing 9.1), I tried to remove any software that seemed likely to be related. Snapfish, Sightspeed, Acrobat, etc. I did NOT try to remove Rhapsody and Real, but just to be clear there's nothing I installed which should be dealing directly with media or drives.

 

Let's see. Things others might not have installed:

Activestate Perl

Apache (only loaded on demand, not running as a server)

PenguiNet SSH terminal, FlashFXP client

MapSource, StreetAtlas, and Topo!

standards like Eudora, Photoshop, Corel, Quicken

Nothing that should be looking at audio CDs, that's for sure.

 

By the way, I deleted a couple of posts that went WAY off track from the subject of the thread.

Do you let people know when you delete their posts? It might help educate us about what we did wrong. Don't know if you're talking about any of my posts.

 

Of course you can not have 2 applications using the same CD/DVD drive at the same time. When our applications are running we take control of the drive and we block other applications (preventing other applications from interfering with what you are trying to do with Easy Media Creator).

Maybe. I can have Windows Media Player playing from the audio CD, then start EMC9.1 and watch the Gracenote animation, then go to Audio>ConvertCDs, and begin copying tracks to my hard disk. WMP keeps playing quite nicely.

 

Nothing in my problem/rant is about burning. It's all about READING from the drive, not writing.

 

I'm also wondering if the CDs that you have a problem with include any CD-ROM content.

Nope. Some of them are old, some are new. Don't see a pattern.

 

Some CDs have been produced with DRM components that try to prevent you from ripping or copying.

Right, but then Windows Media Player wouldn't let me rip them to disk. And it does.

 

Do you see any files on the disc when you open it in Windows Explorer.

Nope. Good question. I looked specifically for that.

 

Steve

[Blaze]

I'm positive this is a Vista-specific problem, since I installed the same EMC9 from the same purchased Roxio CD on my recently-reformatted XP machine and my new Vista machine. The problem is only with Vista.

 

I decided to convert my CD collection to MP3 files on my hard disk. No problem. Most of the time. The Gracenote logo shows up, the track names fill in, life is good. But for 3 of the first 20 CDs I tried, Roxio locks up. It hangs. The Gracenote logo doesn't show up until I eject the CD. I left it four hours just to be sure!

 

Any ideas? Things to try? HELP!

 

Steve

Sounds like you have some security software such as McAfee, Norton or Trend Micro that might be causing the problem. YOu might disable them using MSCONFIG and reboot the system to see if the change has any effect. You can also check the Event Viewer logs to see if there is any indication of a cause.

 

Just a quick note here but frankly I don't bother using Roxio for this feature. WinAmp is much more effecient. I rip to .WAV (extremely fast) an then transcode to both FLAC and MP3 using Foobar 2000 and the latest encoders from their respective sources. When all done I burn the FLAC's to DVD-R for backup.

[eckert]

Chances are it has something to do with a GraceNote conflict.

 

Good suggestion.

 

You might try uninstalling Rhapsody and/ Real Player to see if this resolves the problem.

 

Nope. No change. But still, it was a good suggestion.

 

Is there a way to trigger EMC to go check Gracenote again? Or to tell it not to? Turning off the option for connecting to the internet seems to have no effect.

 

Steve

[Blaze]

And one more thing... poking around more in the Event Viewer I came across multiple entries like this:

 

"The RoxMediaDB9 service is marked as an interactive service. However, the system is configured to not allow interactive services. This service may not function properly."

 

Anyone know what that means or how to fix it?

 

Steve

Quite interesting. This appears to be another one of the "permissions" issues that occassionaly causes problems with programs that have database components loading on boot. Adobe's Photoshop is another example I've run into. Here's a couple links for your review.

 

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms683502.aspx

"Interactive Services

 

Typically, services are console applications that are designed to run unattended without a graphical user interface (GUI). However, some services may require occasional interaction with a user. This page discusses the best ways to interact with the user from a service."

 

===

 

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/vista/services.mspx

Impact of Session 0 Isolation on Services and Drivers in Windows Vista

Updated: March 23, 2006

 

Impact of Session 0 Isolation on Services and Drivers in Windows Vista

Windows Vista isolates services in Session 0 and runs applications in other sessions, so services are protected from attacks that originate in application code. In Windows Server 2003 and earlier versions of Windows, all services run in Session 0 along with applications, which poses a security risk because services run at elevated privilege and therefore are targets for malicious agents who are looking for a means to elevate their own privilege level.

[eckert]

You can also check the Event Viewer logs to see if there is any indication of a cause.

 

Excellent suggestion! Thanks! I looked there, and see many entries like these:

 

The description for Event ID 0 from source AlbumCore9 cannot be found. Either the component that raises this event is not installed on your local computer or the installation is corrupted. You can install or repair the component on the local computer.

 

The description for Event ID 0 from source RoxSniffer9 cannot be found. Either ...

 

The description for Event ID 0 from source RoxLiveShare9 cannot be found. Either ...

 

Hmmm. Could this be due to a crippled version of Roxio having been installed as part of the Vista Premium that came on my HP PC? I removed all that before installing EMC9 from my purchased CD, but what if some components that MS wormed into the release of Vista are still there and misbehaving?

 

A good start, but doesn't immediately point to a solution.

 

BTW, the "offending" CDs always behave the same way. "Good" ones never fail, "bad" ones never work.

 

 

Just a quick note here but frankly I don't bother using Roxio for this feature. WinAmp is much more effecient. I rip to .WAV (extremely fast) an then transcode to both FLAC and MP3 using Foobar 2000 and the latest encoders from their respective sources. When all done I burn the FLAC's to DVD-R for backup.

 

OK, there's a bit more to it. Some time ago I wrote a Perl script that unpacks EMC's .jwl files for artist, album, and track info. EMC7 and EMC9 are different, but only minor mods were required to get the script working again for EMC9. I use that to create an HTML file with all the info for all my CDs (hundreds, in a Sony jukebox-style player). I not only want to rip some of the CDs, I want to create jewel-case files for all of them as an intermediate step to my own album/track database. Don't know how to get at that info from any Windoze tools. Would prefer not to load/learn any more tools. Having trouble with the ones I thought I knew how to use!

 

Steve

[eckert]

Tom and everyone else stopped responding. Sigh.

 

My attempt to purchase EMC10 has been screwed up 4 times in a row. Since my order on Sep 28, I still haven't managed to get the software... and customer service can't say exactly why. Twice it got "stuck", once it got entered as a test instead of a real purchase, and once it got cancelled by accident??

 

Or maybe my order is getting the same treatment as my posts. Click. Delete.

 

Steve

[Beerman]

Tom and everyone else stopped responding. Sigh.

 

My attempt to purchase EMC10 has been screwed up 4 times in a row. Since my order on Sep 28, I still haven't managed to get the software... and customer service can't say exactly why. Twice it got "stuck", once it got entered as a test instead of a real purchase, and once it got cancelled by accident??

 

Or maybe my order is getting the same treatment as my posts. Click. Delete.

 

Steve

Steve, I think 2 posts talking of your bad luck is enough. Must you post more? Please stop unless you want the moderator to delete them.

[eckert]

And one more thing... poking around more in the Event Viewer I came across multiple entries like this:

 

"The RoxMediaDB9 service is marked as an interactive service. However, the system is configured to not allow interactive services. This service may not function properly."

 

Anyone know what that means or how to fix it?

 

Steve

[eckert]

Here's a couple links for your review.

Excellent! Thanks! I think you've nailed the problem. And there's no fix to it until Roxio rewrites their busted code. (My attempt to remove and re-install resulted only in Drag-to-Disc refusing to recognize my drive that it used to work with, so THAT was a bad idea.)

 

It completely fits the symptoms to assume some part of EMC is asking me for something. I can't see the dialog box because they're connecting it to "Session 0" instead of my user desktop. I'm probably using the wrong words, but I think I've got the concept. I can't respond because I can't see the dialog. EMC won't continue because I haven't answered the question. Hung.

 

Is anyone from Roxio reading this thread? Is there any chance we can expect EMC to be re-written to follow the white paper guidelines pointed to by Blaze? (If not, please be honest and REMOVE the Vista certification, because you're not following the rules!)

 

Some software (like Eudora) has a generalized debug level facillity that can log some or all events and actions to a file. The end of the file indicates where something went wrong. I've tried Roxio's error log, but that seems to apply only to Creator Classic errors, and nothing gets written there when this happens. Is there another debug facility I'm unaware of? I'm looking for a way to know what question it's asking when it hangs.

 

Steve

[eckert]

Here's a couple links for your review.

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms683502.aspx

 

I looked into that one some more... at that URL is this text:

However, note that the following registry key contains a value, NoInteractiveServices, that controls the effect of SERVICE_INTERACTIVE_PROCESS: 

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Windows

The NoInteractiveServices value defaults to 0, which means that services with SERVICE_INTERACTIVE_PROCESS are allowed to run interactively. When NoInteractiveServices is set to a nonzero value, no service started thereafter is allowed to run interactively, regardless of whether it has SERVICE_INTERACTIVE_PROCESS.

 

So I went looking there with regedit (no longer seems to be a way to start it without the command shell?).

 

My NoInteractiveServices is set to 0, which seems to imply interactive processes SHOULD RUN. But that doesn't match the event log which says they are prohibited. This entry is set to 0 in ControlSet001, ControlSet003, and CurrentControlSet. Sigh. Everything seems to dead-end.

 

Steve

[Tom at Roxio]

I'm positive this is a Vista-specific problem, since I installed the same EMC9 from the same purchased Roxio CD on my recently-reformatted XP machine and my new Vista machine. The problem is only with Vista.

 

I decided to convert my CD collection to MP3 files on my hard disk. No problem. Most of the time. The Gracenote logo shows up, the track names fill in, life is good. But for 3 of the first 20 CDs I tried, Roxio locks up. It hangs. The Gracenote logo doesn't show up until I eject the CD. I left it four hours just to be sure!

 

The strange thing is that OTHER applications, like Windows Explorer and even the Task Manager, also hang. As long as Roxio is waiting for the track titles, nothing else can function. Ejecting the CD always clears up the problem but I never get album or track titles.

 

I installed the 9.1.075 upgrade from their website, NOTHING CHANGED. I made sure Drag-to-Disc isn't running on startup. NOTHING CHANGED.

 

This is a Media Center PC, and that software is quite able to play the CD, with track titles, and view cover art, etc. If it is playing when I start Roxio's "Convert CD" utility, however, Media Center abruptly stops playing and doesn't respond until I eject the CD and kill Roxio.

 

Any ideas? Things to try? HELP!

 

Steve

 

Steve,

Do you have Napster installed? If not, do you have any other media software installed? Please let us know.

 

By the way, I deleted a couple of posts that went WAY off track from the subject of the thread. I'd like to ask everyone's cooperation in keeping threads on topic... pick one subject, then stay on it... and avoid debating Roxio's intentions. Drag to Disc is part of Easy Media Creator 9.1, and it was certified for Windows Vista along with every other component in EMC 9.1. I doubt it is related to this issue.

 

Of course you can not have 2 applications using the same CD/DVD drive at the same time. When our applications are running we take control of the drive and we block other applications (preventing other applications from interfering with what you are trying to do with Easy Media Creator).

 

I'm also wondering if the CDs that you have a problem with include any CD-ROM content. Some CDs have been produced with DRM components that try to prevent you from ripping or copying. Do you see any files on the disc when you open it in Windows Explorer.

 

Tom