Sorry for the long post but...

I've just moved house and wanted to clean a load of old stuff off my PC and have a general hard disk clear out too, so i removed all my old files and progs to have a clean start in my new home studio. I also, being a good (but gullible) boy, decided to install SP2 on my PC...

After installing SP2, imagine how gutted i was when i discovered that when i came to reinstall my Sonic Foundry progs (Vegas, Acid 4.0 and SoundForge 6.0) none of my plugins were recognised at all and they were marked as "not registered" this was the same for all plugins, free, shareware and paid for ones too!

I struggled for ages tweaking this and that but eventually I just had to do a system restore to how my machine was prior to the SP2 installation. Some people suggest that you disable system restore on Audio machines, i just thank God i didn't follow that advice.

Has anyone else heard of trouble with the SP2 update and audio?? I can't believe i'm the only one. I'm sure there will be a new patch for the problem at some point but for now i'm back to SP1...

I now have a new problem i can't fathom out... when i play mpg or avi files in any media player i get a horrible crackling sound that varies with the audio level. I've uninstalled all codecs and reinstalled them... swapped the grfx and and soundcard PCI slots but no joy yet. All wavs, mp3s etc play fine, just movie files are screwed, which means i can't score in Acid & Vegas at the moment.

Any bright ideas or help would be much appreciated.

MM

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http://www.steinberg.net/ProductPage_sb.asp?Product_ID=2181&Langue_ID= 7
http://www.avid.com/products/xpressdv/
http://www.ableton.com/

{Sorry}

Oh... in case you're not willing to spring for Wavelab: http://www.adobe.com/products/audition/main.html }

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www.RTaylor-Design.Com

Hi,

Dunno if I'm actually helping you with my reply, but here we go,

as long as you don't use your DAW for internet, there should be absolutely NO reason for using SP2.

SP2 is mainly aimed at security. There's a ton of info on the web, stating that SP2 is far from mature and causes more problems than it solves. Please, make sure to use an other computer to go on the internet if you have the option. Since many people are behind somesort of router/firewall, the SP2 included firewall won't be nececary anyway and why patch your machine from hackers if you don't access the internet anyway ? I suggest you install future MicroSoft updates only if they solve a problem you have at that moment.
I know this is talking in retrospect and I don't want to sound like some smart-@ss, but I hope you can trust the backup you made before installing SP2 ? MS surely suggests doing this, before installing any of their patches. One should always backup their machine before installing any application which modifies the registry. System restore won't always be able to restore your machine the way it was before. In my opinion Ghost would be the only backup I'd use.

And you mentioned that you also changed your soundcard to another PCI slot to solve the crackling which occured after installing SP2? Why do so if it was working fine before ? This proves that your machine is not in the state it was before installing SP2.

Sorry I can't provide you with any constructive help to solve your problem, but if I were you, I'd re-build your DAW and use a separate partition or better a separate machine if you want to go on the internet.

regards
Ronald

Just a hunch, but...

The SP2 upgrade installs a firewall that is enabled by default, you should have seen the Security Center launch when you first booted into it. I'm guessing the plugin installations are trying to connect to the internet to register and are being blocked by this (although you should have received a warning saying that a program is trying to connect out as that is the default setting), but anyway, perhaps those installations will successfully register if you disable the firewall when you run them.

As for the audio cracking, I haven't experienced this with MPEG-1 on my p3 600 with a soundblaster live using Windows media player 10, but that app does not run MPEG-2 very well at all. When I use another application (Sonic Cineplayer) that has its own codec it's fine. I remember the Windows Media Player codec was resource intensive before, maybe it's even more so now, and it probably takes takes precedence over any codecs your other applications installed. Sonic manages to make their codecs take precedence over Microsoft's when you install one of their products.

There's a simple application called GraphEdit which is easily available on the net that is a great tool for troubleshooting codec issues.

Quote:

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http://www.steinberg.net/ProductPage_sb.asp?Product_ID=2181&Langue_ID=7
http://www.avid.com/products/xpressdv/
http://www.ableton.com/

{Sorry}

Oh... in case you're not willing to spring for Wavelab: http://www.adobe.com/products/audition/main.html }

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er.. cheers for the links, i have no idea why you posted them. As for Wavelab, i already have 4.0...

Thanks to the others for the replies though.

Basically i only tried swapping the cards around because i was told that the crackle could be caused by a conflicting IRQ... and rather than mess around in XP working it out I just moved the card to a new socket so that the grfx and soundcards were no longer sharing an IRQ...

It would be great to have one PC for music and one for net use, but i've just moved to the UK from Spain a few weeks ago and only have the one PC i brought with me.

Anyhow, this crackling thing is becoming a major pain. I do have a "real" backup, courtesy of Drive Image - but it's a bit out of date and so hence i used the system restore function. I may just have to go back to the old Drive Image file though, but it's such a pain reinstalling all the software i've added since i created the image.

My machine is partitioned so that all audio files are not with the progs and OS, so i'm not totally screwed yet, but i'd rather just try figure out why i get this crackle than spend days reinstalling all my software and drivers etc.

Cheers for all the help - i'll keep at it..

MM

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:} Just a way too early in the morning suggestion.

{*Still* being irritated at waiting for my Sonic Foundry numbers. {You'd think one would be enough.}}

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www.RTaylor-Design.Com

ive just had a problem with sp2 luckily not with any of my music software tho.. a friend of mine emailed me an mp3 of a rough mix of something theyve been working on, when i came to get the attatchment outlook express promptly claimed that it had`removed access to the following unsafe attatchments` i cant bloody download it now!!, its not got a virus on it my friend has norton fully updated, it hasnt even given me the option of allowing the download, its shat on a stick

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as metal as your nanna`s new hip

Don't know about outlook express, but the full version of outlook won't let you receive a .exe attachment at all. Just blocks it. However there is a work around. You can edit the list of blocked attachment file types in the registry. Do a search and you'll probably find the answer.

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need to get rid of this stupid sig...

Quote:

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Don't know about outlook express, but the full version of outlook won't let you receive a .exe attachment at all. Just blocks it. However there is a work around. You can edit the list of blocked attachment file types in the registry. Do a search and you'll probably find the answer.

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that is such a lame thing for MS to do. OK maybe it should be automatically checked in a box to say don't do .exe files but they should make it easier to allow them through.

MM

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its not an .exe file tho its a .mp3 file !!!!

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as metal as your nanna`s new hip

Some serious suggestions:
http://www.tusafe.com/nonags/emc.html

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www.RTaylor-Design.Com

thats a good link cheers m8, im already using mozilla i might sack outlook express off, ive looked everywhere and cant find out how to get that attatchment to download, its greyed out when you click on the paper clip

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as metal as your nanna`s new hip

The link is to alternate mail clients. I can recommend Pegasus, Fox, Phoenix and Vivian. I use Sylpheed. {It being the best of the bunch.} None of them will confuse you with grey paperclips.

Outlook may be a nice mailer... It is, unfortunately, a virus magnet, is altogether too scriptable and doesn't quite have the functionality of some of the better free programs. {If you want real functionality download ntemacs or xemacs and set up gnus or one of the plethora of mailer modes that are available. Or... you could set up Cygwin and use mutt.}}

Also exceptional are Mulberry:
http://www.cyrusoft.com/

and
Mahogany {especially if you're running Python on your system.}
http://mahogany.sourceforge.net/

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www.RTaylor-Design.Com

Quote:

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ve just had a problem with sp2 luckily not with any of my music software tho.. a friend of mine emailed me an mp3 of a rough mix of something theyve been working on, when i came to get the attatchment outlook express promptly claimed that it had`removed access to the following unsafe attatchments` i cant bloody download it now!!, its not got a virus on it my friend has norton fully updated, it hasnt even given me the option of allowing the download, its shat on a stick

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Iceman,
In Outlook, Goto: Tools/Options , click the security tab and uncheck "Do not allow attachments to be saved or opened that could potentially be a virus" and all should be well!