Saturday 15 September 2007

Problems with Nero 7 in Windows Vista Ultimate x64

I have had a number of issues in getting my favourite burning program, Nero 7, working in Windows Vista Ultimate x64. These are:


1. Every time I login I receive a message "Nero Home Has Stopped Responding". When I click to end this process, it obviously starts again because the message keeps repeating forever.
I have opened a support call with Nero about this but no progress so far. My work round is to kill the processes "WerFault.exe *32" and "NMBgMonitor.exe" in Task Manager. I have further used MSConfig to disable Nero Home on the Startup tab.


2. In Media Centre, selecting the Nero plug-in causes an "Invalid Application Error".
I have also passed this to Nero, but again no response as yet. I am using MCEBuddy to automatically convert Media Centre recordings to WMV files and then burning using standard DVD creation programs. This saves me disk space and gives me more control anyway so I am not that bothered.


3. When trying to burn a DVD or CD with Nero Burning ROM, I get a message saying "The Server is Busy. This action cannot be completed.....".
I believe that this is related to problem 1 above. I killed all the NM* processes in task manager and Nero was able to open the burning dialog OK. The processes did keep restarting, so I have used Computer Management to disable the NMIndexingService service. I may have to kill these NM* processes manually again next time but at least I can get Nero to work.


At the moment, I have the latest version of Nero 7 available from the Nero website: 7.10.1.0


Update: Ahead came up with a patched DLL but this has not fixed the problem for me.


Update 2: Just had an email from Ahead to confirm that this is a known and fixed issue that is fixed in the next release. Unfortunately, they could not give me the date for the next release. :(

Wednesday 12 September 2007

Extracting WMV from MCE

I initially tried playing with DVRMSToolbox, but it had some significant issues wwth Vista 64. (Would not convert to WMV and Commercial skipping not working in Media Centre).

I found another tool called MCE Buddy. This is not as flexible as DVRMSToolbox but it just works!

You can find it here:
http://www.mcebuddy.com/

How to Enable Versbose Startup\Shutodown\Logon\Logoff Messages in Windows XP

Create HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System\verbosestatus
It needs to be Dword with a value of 0x1.

Tuesday 11 September 2007

BBC iPlayer on Windows Vista

I had worked out sometime ago how to install Sky Anytime onto my Laptop (useful for those stays away), but I wanted to install the BBC iPlayer back onto my desktop after an upgrade to Windows Vista (I have no need for 4OD as it is delivered through my Virgin Media cable).

It turns out that all you have to do is to change the user agent (UA) strings to fool the BBC website into letting you download the iPlayer.

I found details on how to do it here:
http://community.plus.net/comms/2007/08/02/how-to-install-the-bbc-iplayer-on-windows-vista/

You can download the UA registry changes from here:
http://www.fiddlertool.com/useragent.aspx


Update:
You can only play the DRM files if you have administrative rights.



Update2:
I've found the download from Microsoft called "User Agent String Utility" to be a better long-term choice. This allows you to open a copy of IE7 configured to react like IE6. You can then use this to access the BBC iPlayer site. Get it here.

Update to CS 2.1 SP3

Please let me know of any problems.

I am actually a couple of versions behind because CS 2007 SP2 is out.

Synchronise Media from Media Centre to External Storage on XDA Orbit

Since installing Windows Vista Ultimate and a TV card on my desktop PC, I have been playing with Media Centre. Everything was working great except synchronising content to my Windows Mobile 5.0 device (an O2 XDA Orbit).

I was only being offered the change to synchronise to the internal storage of the device. The XDA Orbit has just 64MB of internal storage, of which I only have 14MB free. You can't fit much on there!

It turns out that this is a bug with Media Centre not resolving device names correctly. The fix isn't currently delivered by Windows\Microsoft update, but once I had identified and installed it, everything worked fine.

I've not yet worked out how to synch individual programs from MCE so I still have issues with running out of storage on my 1GB card. I've seen reports that 2GB is the max I can use although some claim 4GB - I see a trip to ebay in my future! I also feel I get more control with Nero recode so I guess it would be great if you could extract WMV files from MCE, anyone know how?

I found the bug described here:
http://www.tabletquestions.com/windows-vista/9396-windows-mobile-device-center-media-center-pocket-pc-sync.html

I found the KB931621 fix here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931621/en-us


Update:
Nero can process the dvr-ms files directly (at least with the Vista codec pack I have installed). You find them in C:\Users\Publix\Recorded TV.