ChangeWP problems with Vista install

[praphan]

Hi Praphan, here's a step by step for RAMdisck:

   
Re: RAMDisk - Setup
« Reply #61 on: October 08, 2010, 02:14:11 pm »
Quote
The best way the apply RAMDisk:

First set the partition-size and fat32, then do nothing, reboot (or maybe 2 times)

Then you have image space (extra hdd) on your RAM, then copy the complete xx folder to that location.
next, setup xx with all settings that are needed, including your key.

Then go to the second tab in RAMDisk, Load and Save, and press "Save Disk Image Now" and select checkbox "Load Disk Image at Startup"
Reboot

Then finally select checkbox "Save Disk Image on Shutdown"
Reboot

Its about all those reboots that are needed, but when up and running it will work nice.

Roy

PS: correct me if i'am wrong, I will adjust it.
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(Sept 30, 2010)                                                 
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#4Engine, Special Mode, 48 samples, SFS 12MB, DAP, Scheme=3, Q1=1, Q2/Q3/Q4/Q5=30,30,0,0, PlayerPrio=Low, ThreadPrio=Realtime
x-Allow Format Change, x-Stop Services, x-Copy to XX-drive by Standard, x-Start Engine3 During Conversion
PeterSt
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Re: RAMDisk
« Reply #62 on: October 08, 2010, 02:21:50 pm »
Quote
Quote
First set the partition-size and fat32, then do nothing, reboot (or maybe 2 times)

This seems superfuous, but is not; It will avoid copying the XX stuff to the RAMDisk again (maybe two times); no big deal, but setting those settings each time is not a nice thing.
Moral : first wait until the RAMDisk shows up automatically after a reboot (thus, maybe two), and when that works, copy in the XX data, set the settings, and finally check that box "Save Image on shutdown" and also save the Image at that point. This latter again is "necessary" because each change (like from the mentioned checkbox) is only dealt with *after* the reboot. So, just one step too late in fact.

Like Roy said : when it works, it keeps on working. Really a nice tool IMO.

Peter

What kind of problems have you encountered trying to install XX on your Vista partition? Just wondering cause I'm planning the same with my desktop.

 


Boleary,

Did you say somewhere (i don't now were) that you would explain how to shut off services? I use my pc for music only and would like to play around a bit with those. If it ends up in a new install from Vista so be it.

i do not now if it is a lot off work but it would really be appreciated! (maybe a few screenshots)?


 

Hi Boleary,

Sorry for late reply about my problem with Vista. I don't have any problem installing Vista and W7 in the same PC. But I am using 2 HDDs , one for Vista and another for W7. I tested both OS by running common applications inclusing PowerDVD without problem. XXHE works on W7. But on Vista, I could start it but when I hit "play" button, XXHE stop responding. It took about 3-5 minutes for my PC to come back to normal operation and said XXHE failed to run. I had problem with "change WP" (wall paper) too and Peter suggested that I disabled all the WP options. I did but still XX did not run after hitting the play button.

I don't know what I did wrong since I installed XX the same way I did on W7. I did reinstall three times and did not work.

I will re-install Vista and set it to lite instalment and see what happen.

thanks for the advise on RAMDISK anyway.
Too bad that I have never heard XX on Vista so far.

Cheers!
Praphan

[PeterSt]

Praphan,

Try to isolate the album you use for "testing" this. Make a new root folder somewhere, call that "Music". Under that create a folder "TestAlbums". Under that create a sub folder with the name of the artist. Under that crate a subfolder with the title of the album.
Now in XX set the Music Root to C:\Music\ (C: assumed). Quit XX and restart.

Now go to the Gallery Area, and select that one album for playback.
I think this will now work ...

If so indeed, there must me something wrong with your album structure, and ChangeWP can't deal with it. This is a kind of "bug" by itself and solved for 0.9z-3, but anyway, it is incurred for by the (wrongish) structure.
So let me know whether this now works.

In the mean time you may have TaskManager running, and after pressing Play you may see ChangeWP being there consuming a lot of CPU. If so, just kill it.

In either case let me know what happens, and DO NOT reinstall Vista. It is unrelated.
Peter

[praphan]

Hi Peter,

Thank you for the advise.

I am not quite sure if my problem is related to wall paper. I followed your guide by reorganizing the music file  structure as suggested. The test did not work smoothly. I can sometime get the music playing randomly though but have to wait for XX which was not responding for 4 munites.  Here is a summary of my step by step actions:

1. I booted Vista. Then do nothing but started XX. Then I could change all the settings on XX without problem.  Then I added album in the playlist by clicking the library botton as I usually did on W7 platform.

2. Then click play button. XX went into "not responding" mode and the PC went unresponsive. Cannot launch any other applications even the explorer while XX was not responding. Not even launch the task manager.

3. After waiting for 3-4 minutes, sometime I could get the sound up for one minute and then the PC went halt again. But this was random. Sometime I would not hear any sound at all. The clock did not run.

4. If I have a patient then I will wait longer say another 5 minutes and I got the dialogue box saying XXEngine3.exe has stop working . Sometime I got the message saying the host process for windows service stop working as well. But the messages were random. Not getting this all the times. Then PC came back to working condition again. But one thing for sure is that XX stop running after I hit play again

5. If no patient , then I have to do hard reboot and the PC will bring me back to normal Vista window and the same problem again when I hit play button in XX.

6. At some point,  I just wait and wait for XX to come back from unresponsive mode and then close the XX and start it again. Now this time, I just uninstalled the Window Security Essential which is basically a free virus and internet security software.  Then I added the song to the playlist by dragging each song from the library area on the left side of the GUI to the play list. Then BINGO I was lucky to get XX running continueosly. Wow !!!!  Sound beautiful!  The reason why I uninstalled security Essential was that i got the malware thing running when I checked the task manager history. So I thought it might be the MS security that caused the problem

7. I shutdown the PC and restarted the system again to see how XX behave.  Oh no. Lots of problem messages coming up. But when I started XX, it worked.    While running XX a message coming up saying Task Scheduler Engine has stopped  working. And then a message saying Host Process for Windows services stopped working and was closed. I did not care as long as I hear the beautiful sound and enjoying music.

8. Test shutting down the PC and restart again . Now XX run smoother. But with some window error message like Spooler subsysgtem appl stopped working and was closed.



I am not quite sure what caused all these trouble but I guess  should be the security software.  When I have time tonite I will reinstall the Microsoft security Essential and see what happen.


But for now, I agreed that overall sound quality of XX on vista is better than on W7. No glicthes at all for me since I use Sennheiser HD 650 for the SQ test via Berkeley Alpha DAC. I hear no glitches. Sound more liquid and more natural.

I am happy now. But have to strukkle to get my system running smoother.  Any further suggestion?

I will come back again to report if MS Security Essential is causing the trouble.

Regards,
Praphan

[PeterSt]

Wow, that is some report Praphan.

Ok, it never occurred before (but I suspect (I think it was) crisnee to have had the same), but the "stalling" thing must be about the virus checker. I guess it checks the large music files going into memory, and takes ages to to it. This will be a matter of settings in the virus program, or otherwise don't use it (they're all lousy IMO, and I never use one).

Next I have been waiting for the first one to come up with those "has stopped working" messages. So, for you this is unknown (as it will to many), but this is just Vista, and those processes not getting enough time slices, so they quit. Isn't that nice ? It's always harmless as far as I have found.
Also, the registry tweaks (about the priority levels etc., from Nick) greatly "help" this (as I noticed), but it's really no problem.
You may do a search for it, and you will find dozens and dozens of people reporting it, but it was all from the past and Vista ... and WASAPI, which arranges those things internally ... as I think.

All 'n all you're good to go, and very nice you found the problem (yourself ).
Peter

[praphan]

Hi Peter,

Just to drop you a few lines to report on update of my system.

1. MS Security Essentials interfered XXHE. Uninstalled it.
2. My registry was all messed up after using registry application to clean it. DON'T USE THIS KIND OF TOOL.
3. Ending up reinstall Vista and update the motherboard Bios
4. Don't install any drivers that I don't need.
5. I run Vista only at the moment.

The system is stable now. No more annoying "....... stopped working".

Next project for me is to set up RAMDISK.

thanks and regards,
Praphan

[crisnee]

Hi Praphan,

I had a problem with installation and it had to do with Microsoft Security Essentials and an unknown device driver combination. I'm still not sure exactly what caused what but Security Essentials was part of it. The weird thing was that I'd uninstalled it and continued to get problems but to a slightly lesser extent. It turns out even though uninstalled there was still a related anti-malware service running. When I got rid of that and finally figured out the device problem everything cleared up.

So check services for a Msft Essentials anti-malware service and disable it if it's still there.

Chris

[praphan]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for sharing your experience with me on installation of XXHE on Vista.

Mine is the weirdest thing I have ever encountered. Here is the story:

After I posted my report saying that my system was running smooth after reinstalling Vista with minimal drivers, I have had problem again after two days. Same old random all kind of services "....... stopped running" ranging from graphic card controller service to Exploror. This caused XXHE stopped running as well. Even worse, it could sometimes lead to 'blue screen'.   What I usually did is to run 'system recovery' to go back to a point where I am sure that the system used to run smooth. Then I could run it smooth again. I tried loading XXHE, internet Explorer, CD ripping application and DVD player all at the same time. The system could handle all these applications smoothly.    During the test, I even tried shut down the PC and then rebooted to run all these applications again. It worked fine. Then shutting the PC down at night.

The weird thing is that after I rebooted again in the morning. These kind of ' service...... stopped working' came back and haunted me again like a ghost.  I have been fighting with this ghost for a while. Sometime even with reinstallation of Vista. Peter said it is unrelated but reinstallation is like working from a clean sheet of paper as I am not good at managing the PC.

Some of the PC guru at my office suggested that I had a virus problem., some even said that I should have hardware defect.

What did I do wrong?

Help please.

Thanks in advance.
Praphan

PS. I had XXHE installled on another computer runnning W7 without any problem at all.

[PeterSt]

Praphan - I still claim this is all normal, although it shouldn't go as far as something shutting down causes XX to die (and I never heard of *that* as consistent behaviour).

What you can do to prevent this, or minimalize it :

- Lowering your Thread Priority;
- Highering Q1;
- Highering the buffer of your device.

Again : This is just Vista, and the playback engine (XXEngine3.exe) is demanding so much from the system, that services are shutdown (or they do that themselves) because thay can't respond hence don't get the time they need.

Of course this is related to the processing power of the system itself; the less it has of it, the more this will happen.

*When* this happens (a service shuts down) it very well can happen that the sound is distorted until you click away the "Has stopped working" screen from the service in question. I think I remember that even Engine3 can die because of such a message, but I certainly do *not* recall that it won't play again. And, once the service (etc.) has gone, it won't come back automaically for that (boot) session, so you are done with it. Unless ... unless you imply the restart of it (I think I have seen this, but I don't recall which one that was).

Now, after you have seen me writing this (once more), maybe you can deal better with it (mentality).
Peter


PS: I can imagine that if you undo the priority tweaks from Nick (repeated by Marcin in his own topic), this helps too. But remember, it's just a good thing ! (those services shutting down)

[crisnee]

Praphan,

What all is connected to your pc when you boot it? USB devices in particular. The PC I had trouble with has problems when it encounters certain usb devices at startup. Even now this pc refuses to do anything at all, it doesn't even get to load bios option when I have a particular usb hub connected. It will just sit there, stopped dead, no error, no nothing. I'll have to hard boot and make sure the device is disconnected. Once the system is up I can connect the device and no problem.

Also, another thing. This is hard to believe but on my system it works. After getting the blue screen, if I do a shutdown and reboot, enter the bios and don't change anything but hit save anyway, I can get back into Vista no problem. How did I figure this out, by observation and luck. Still can't believe it, makes no sense at all. (All this is unrelated to XX by the way) Just quirky problems I've encountered recently which may have been exacerbated/accentuated by the problems I had with XX.

Contrary to what anyone says, I would just try to get the system back to what it was before you installed XX. and then look for anything unusual, anything not working quite right before XX is even on there. If after a while everything is and stays normal then I'd install XX in its most simple way and work from there very slowly with any changes to your system (services etc.) and XX changes testing every step of the way. Boring, but....

Also check your sleep and hibernation settings they can cause problems, the hibernation file in particular if it is corrupted, it did for me.

Good luck and ask me anything you like. I know what you're going through. My stuff with this pc was so bizarre it would take much to long to enumerate all that happened to it in the last month or so. By the way, make sure you don't have that anti-malware service running inadvertently.

Remember after a blue screen or boot problem to try the bios trick, who knows it might work for you too. 

Chris

[PeterSt]

Great Chris. Thanks.

Also to keep in mind :

A device which theoretically can be booted from (including SD etc. cards) can generate a bulk of interrupts during booting that it looks like it won't happen at all. But it will, and only takes an hour or so.
I'm not sure anymore how I found this out; probably by watching the light which is in such a reader.
A USB stick (device) could show the same ...

1c
Peter

[crisnee]

Praphan,

One more thing. You might consider (if you have the space on the computer, and the inclination) to install a separate OS just for XX. For instance I installed Windows Server 2008 sp1 (not the newer version). You can download it from Microsoft and try it free for at least 6 months. I've installed it, stripped it down, don't use it for anything but music, no internet, standard vga etc. Barebones and I'm having no problems. (This is on the same quirky pc which doesn't boot with the usb device connected and doesn't under this OS either as it never gets to that point). By the way, there was absolutely no detectable hd activity or flashing lights of any kind on anything while the pc was just sitting there.

The one problem with the W2008 thing is eventually, if you like it, you'll have to buy it. I can't even find out how much it would be for an activation key. True I haven't tried very hard, but it's confusing and might be expensive. A definite opt out for me. By the way W2008 is basically a version of Vista, only very basic in terms of everyday OS use, and heavy on networking stuff. So if you disable all the networking you've got a very light basic system. Not exactly what it was meant for, but seemingly effective.

If you do go the W2008 route ask me for a few tricks or tips before you install it. They might save you some time, they certainly would have helped me out.

Chris

[PeterSt]

By now : Installing Win2008 info.

[praphan]

Hi Christ and Peter,

First of all, thanks so much for the advise. It has been a privilege for me to be part of this community. I consider myself as a novice but never feel alone. There is always a helping hand when needed.

I am quite busy this week and will follow your advice over the weekend. However, I can add more information about my problem as follows:

1. These ".... stop working" things are fatal for my case. It did not only cause XX to shut dead but sometime led to blue screen. I usually fixed the system by using recovery tool to bring the system back to the point where I had no problem. Sometime it was not recoverable and then required reinstalltation of OS.  Well Christ , this BIOS trick is very interesting. If I encountered another blue screen I will give it a try.

2. I don't have any USB device hooked to the system. My PC consisted of

Gigabyte 880 GA UD3H mother board
AMD X4 965 quad core processor
ATI HD 5770 graphic card
Lynx Studio AES 16  , Sub D connector broken out into AES/EBU output.
OCZ Vertex 2 60 GB SSD
One 1TB HHD, one 2TB HHD
Corsair DDR 3 , 4 GB RAM

3. I am sure that the system is not infected since I used the anti virus and malware to scan all the  HDDs.

4. I ran dual OS, W7 on HDD and Vista on SSD. Strange enough, these ghosts were 'contagious' across OS. To elaborate, when I encountered the problem on Vista, I rebooted and  switched to W7 which was shutted down properly and faced no problem prior to shutting down. Once  booted on W7, these ghosts jumped on to W7. Doesn't make any sense to me but it happened.  FYI, XX was not installed on W7 as I intended to use W7 environment purely for HD movie application. Vista was dedicated solely for XXHE.

After these ".....stop service" ghosts haunted me badly two days ago, then I decided to start from a clean sheet of paper ie reformating the two OS disks, pull out the SATA cable for the data disk.  Then reinstalling W7 on SSD. Then loading drivers for motherboard, Lynx card and graphic card. New problem arose. Black screen with hard disk LED blinking forever. After rebooting, same problem. Then I decided to reinstall the driver one by one and found out that the cause of deadly black screen came from ATI graphic card driver. So I am now running the system on a standard VGA adapter. This  is very strange again since I don't have any problem with ATI driver earlier on this PC. Is the graphic card failed ? Should not be since the monitor still connected HD 5770 card but running as a standard VGA.

Last  night I ran memtest. Today I put the CPU on stress test for 14 hours using Prime95. All passed. But these tools did not test the graphic card. So I still doubt if my graphic card failed or it is due to driver conflict. Definitely, now it is not related to XX as I started from a clean sheet of paper without installing XX on the system.

Well this is where I am now.

Next step for me is to remove the graphic card from the motherboard. Hook the monitor  to the onboard DVI connector. Then install XX and see what happen.

I will report back soon.

Thanks so much for the help again.

Cheers!

Praphan

[PeterSt]

Praphan, what a time this must have taken you all. And next still happily write aout it. Phew.

Ok, I only noticed this from your earlier post :

Same old random all kind of services "....... stopped running" ranging from graphic card controller service

It may all be a coincidence, but a. this may have been the time that indeed something broke down in your graphics card and b. most likely the OS will have jumped to another (more generic) driver; could be right away, could be at a next reboot, could be because you had to force your way through it (what about no monitor). And lastly (or next) chances would be fair that you installed a different driver for your graphics card opposed to how it ever was (how many nVidia drivers exist ? how few really work well ? <- just en example).

And for the remainder ... you're on your own. Hahaha.
Jut kidding.

But do I understand it correctly that you also saw the "stopped working" services on W7 ? ... That would be a new one (for me).

All the best,
Peter

[praphan]

Hi Peter,

How can I be on my own when you reply to my post at the speed of light !

1. I am sure that I reinstalled the right graphic card driver since I saved it on the hard disk with clearly marked that it is for which OS.

2. As far as I remember, the "... stop service" issue started after I ran on Vista. I don't think I had ever encountered this issue on W7. But the point is that this ... stop working things got right into W7 environment even without XX installed in it.

3. The easiest way to test the graphic card is to remove it from this PC and stick it in my other PC. The trouble is that it requires too much work since I use water cooling blocks rather than conventional cooling fan units on both GPU and CPU.  Even if I find out that the card fails I cannot RMA anyway (return to manufacturer). I removed the fan and have the warranty voided. Well I can watch the HD movie  from on board VGA adapter though with acceptable decent video quality.

thanks
Praphan