Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[net23]

The lastest on Soundspectrum's forums from yesterday is that they are looking to hear back from MC's dev?

"Latest information from SoundSpectrum

Quote:   
we are still working on a solution for this issue. Drew thinks the problem resides with JRiver, and as soon as we hear back from them on their take, we will get an update out"

Been hoping for a solution to these issues since September of last year...

Fingers crossed.

Thanks!

[millst]

Can anyone from JR confirm that Soundspectrum has contacted them?

-tm

[espomer]

This has been an issue since MC23.  I just now went back to MC22 and GForce 5.81 works perfectly.  Additionally other issues with MC23 and 24 are not there.  Seems to me it is a problem with the newer versions of MC.  Has the team has lost the magic sauce?

[glynor]

For the record, G-Force is working fine on my HTPC with MC24 32-bit.

[net23]

This all started for me when I switched to 64bit MC... at that time Soundspectrum's installer was not installing correctly for the 64bit version. They adjusted GForce's installer to install to the right location for 64bit MC but ever since then it has just caused MC to crash whenever it was selected as a vis. It runs standalone... and with other apps, just not MC. Here's a link to current discussion on their forums http://www.soundspectrum-forums.com/viewtopic.php?t=835

[millst]

Correct link: http://www.soundspectrum-forums.com/viewtopic.php?t=8355

Yeah, as far as I know, it's worked great on all versions of 32-bit MC. The issue and reason for this topic is that it has never worked on 64-bit versions (23 or 24).

-tm

[JimH]

I don't think it's a JRiver problem.

Let them know that they may need a 64 bit version.

[millst]

Ok, thanks. I'll bug them some more.

-tm

[RD James]

Crashes Media Center as soon as I select it. Version 5.8.1 64-bit.

[net23]

Complete uninststall/reinstall of both MC (24.0.27 64bit) and G-Force_581_Platinum and a hunt to make sure all soundspectrum folders throughout system were deleted/restarted...

Still selecting G-Force as vis in MC results in MC crashing.

[net23]

FIXED (for me anyway)

Actually disabling the "High Entropy" Bottom-Up ASLR option in Windows Defender Exploit Protection settings fixed my issue and now G-Force is running in 64bit MC!

Windows Defender Exploit protection

    Use Windows-I to open the Settings application.
    Navigate to Update & Security > Windows Defender.
    Select Open Windows Defender Security Center.
    Select App & browser control listed as a sidebar link in the new window that opens.
    Locate the exploit protection entry on the page, and click on exploit protection settings.

Thanks!

[RD James]

Just in case Jim is wondering, this is not an "antivirus problem" - it's a system-wide security function that is controlled via Defender. Microsoft has gradually moved all these settings into Defender to have them in one location.
Even if you have Defender Antivirus disabled, it would still be in effect.

[JimH]

It's another example of "security" software screwed down so tight that stuff doesn't work.

Antivirus software does loads of things similar to that.

... disabling the "High Entropy" Bottom-Up ASLR option in Windows Defender Exploit Protection settings fixed my issue ...

That was going to be my next guess.

[Hendrik]

It's another example of "security" software screwed down so tight that stuff doesn't work.

Well, not quite. ASLR is a fundamental concept deep in your OS and managed by the kernel (so its not something anyone but the OS itself could do, and all major OSes do it) to keep applications safe, and while its not unbeatable, it definitely helps to protect against a wide range of malicious code. Basically, it hides the applications data in the memory by randomizing the location its stored at, instead of always using the same location and memory layout everytime, so even if you get into the app somehow, you don't know where to look for the data or where to inject your malicious code.

Code that doesn't work with ASLR is for all intents and purposes fundamentally flawed, in my experience this is most often caused by anti-tampering code or licensing-enforcement (ie. DRM) - or in some cases possibly just bad 64-bit code (since it pushes the addresses the app uses into really high regions). So one explanation might be that SoundSpectrum GForce's 64-bit support still needs some work. Or maybe there is a bug in MC, but other plugins run just fine.

[JimH]

The OS can do whatever it wants, but at least it should tell us.

[RD James]

For what it's worth, there are at least two other issues that I've found with this:

1. Uninstalling Media Center and telling it to remove all registry entities is not doing so.
I believe this may be due to typically running MC as a standard user, and the uninstall process requiring elevated permissions.
"Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\JRiver\Media Center 24" is not being removed, so all of my zones/settings persisted even after uninstalling and reinstalling MC.
 
2. Something in my library settings is preventing G-Force from running. I don't know what that is yet, but after completely wiping out the original installation (and making changes to Defender) G-Force worked.
When I restored my library and settings, G-Force stopped working again.
Clearing everything out again and only restoring the library works, but there are a lot of custom import rules, zone rules, renaming presets, and other settings that I'd hate to lose.

[Hendrik]

1. Uninstalling Media Center and telling it to remove all registry entities is not doing so.
I believe this may be due to typically running MC as a standard user, and the uninstall process requiring elevated permissions.
"Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\JRiver\Media Center 24" is not being removed, so all of my zones/settings persisted even after uninstalling and reinstalling MC.

This is unavoidable. When you run with elevation from a standard user, you actually run as an entirely different user, because the standard user is not allowed to elevate itself. As such, the user settings of your standard user are inaccessible to the uninstaller.

[RD James]

This is unavoidable. When you run with elevation from a standard user, you actually run as an entirely different user, because the standard user is not allowed to elevate itself. As such, the user settings of your standard user are inaccessible to the uninstaller.

I thought that might be the case. I wondered if it might be possible to delete those entries first, before requesting elevation.
It wasn't a big deal, I just had to hunt around to find where those settings were being stored.
 
I have found that Media Center is significantly faster when opening, changing views etc now - though that may change once I get things (somewhat) back to how they were.

[Hendrik]

On SoundSpectrum GForce itself, I tried to look into if I see something wrong, but it already crashes the moment we try to instantiate the plugin. From their support forum, all I can see is one moderator testing on Windows 7, which doesn't have these high ASLR modes.

[Awesome Donkey]

From their support forum, all I can see is one moderator testing on Windows 7, which doesn't have these high ASLR modes.

Kinda off-topic, but it's funny... I still have people telling me from time-to-time that they believe Windows 7 is more secure than Windows 10, which couldn't be further from the truth. Even Microsoft's own patches has broken Windows 7 security in the recent past (Total Meltdown).

Sounds like SoundSpectrum needs to do some testing on Windows 10.

[RD James]

Yeah, Windows 10 has been receiving more and more security features - with a big update in 1709 that essentially integrated the functionality of EMET into the OS, and more features added/enabled by default in 1803.
It can be frustrating at times if you have to go through them one-by-one to figure out what is causing the problem (unless you want to disable everything by default - which I would never recommend) and old games in particular seem to require at least a couple of exclusions set before they will run at all now, but I haven't experienced a problem like this before where the program would run but then crash under certain conditions.
 
I wish I knew what was preventing Media Center from loading G-Force on my library though, as it's looking like a lot of work to try and migrate over all of my presets, templates, import settings etc.

[glynor]

Code that doesn't work with ASLR is for all intents and purposes fundamentally flawed

Yeah, or of course, software doing something it ought not to be doing. For the record, I love G-Force and am sad I can't use it on my server system that runs 64-bit MC. But, I would NOT be willing to dial back ASLR for what almost certainly amounts to a bug in Soundspectrum's implementation. Instead, I'm running 32-bit MC on my HTPC where I care the most about being able to use G-Force.

Someone definitely needs to report over to them that this solves the problem, though, as this will probably help point them in the right direction for fixing it correctly.

[Hendrik]

Someone definitely needs to report over to them that this solves the problem, though, as this will probably help point them in the right direction for fixing it correctly.

These findings have been reported on the Soundspectrums forums at the same time as here. That appears to be the most contact anyone seems to have.

[JimH]

I sent them an e-mail today.

[RD James]

For the record, I love G-Force and am sad I can't use it on my server system that runs 64-bit MC. But, I would NOT be willing to dial back ASLR for what almost certainly amounts to a bug in Soundspectrum's implementation.

This can be set per-application via Defender - you don't have to disable high entropy ASLR system-wide.
It still uses bottom-up ASLR, just not the high entropy variant.
 
I'm always hesitant about dialing back security features though. I can use the WDM driver on my older systems because they don't support Secure Boot, but not my main system where I'd use it most.

Instead, I'm running 32-bit MC on my HTPC where I care the most about being able to use G-Force.

Well, it will be working on 32-bit because high entropy ASLR is a 64-bit feature.

[glynor]

Well, it will be working on 32-bit because high entropy ASLR is a 64-bit feature.

Yep. G-Force works fine with 32-bit copies of MC (even on 64-bit Windows 10).

This can be set per-application via Defender - you don't have to disable high entropy ASLR system-wide.

That's good to know, as I didn't realize that. Still, though, this is adding a hole to your protection. If an attacker can exploit G-Force itself, then the whole system would be more vulnerable. And, of course, G-Force does have some network services and is designed to interact with other applications via COM. I wouldn't exactly classify my trust of Soundspectrum's security practices as "high" (or even "medium").

ASLR is important, even though it can also be bypassed in some cases. Security is all about limiting risk. And, since 32-bit MC works just fine for me on my HTPC where I also want to be able to use G-Force, I think I'll stick with it there for now.

[millst]

These findings have been reported on the Soundspectrums forums at the same time as here. That appears to be the most contact anyone seems to have.

I've got a ticket with them, too. I added a note about ASLR.

-tm

[RD James]

ASLR is important, even though it can also be bypassed in some cases. Security is all about limiting risk. And, since 32-bit MC works just fine for me on my HTPC where I also want to be able to use G-Force, I think I'll stick with it there for now.

It is - I'm just not sure that 32-bit is going to be more secure than 64-bit even with the high entropy feature disabled?
As I said: this is only disabling the high entropy component. ASLR is still enabled.

[glynor]

It is - I'm just not sure that 32-bit is going to be more secure than 64-bit even with the high entropy feature disabled?

Just to be clear, I'm only talking about using the 32-bit version of MC, on a 64-bit version of Windows.

This doesn't impact the system's security at all. At least not any more than running any other 32-bit application, including all of the ones built into Windows (Windows Media Player, for example). First of all, ASLR matters far less on applications that can't address huge amounts of RAM because of the attack vector it is protecting against*. And also, perhaps more importantly, because the WoW64 emulator that they're running inside does support those features, and can protect the kernel via the emulation layer to some degree.

But, either way, it is a small difference. Good to know you can disable it and "fix" G-Force until Soundspectrum is able to figure out how to fix it. If they are, indeed, only building against Windows 7 x64, that would definitely explain how they'd never seen the issue.

* And, for this discussion in particular, it matters not at all, because the difference between "standard" ASLR (which is supported for 32-bit applications on Windows 10) and High-Entropy ASLR (which is not) is that Standard ASLR can only use the first 44-bits of virtual memory space to create entropy, whereas HEASLR removes the 44-bit limit. Since, of course, a 32-bit application can't address more than 44-bits of virtual memory, HEASLR is irrelevant for them.

[RD James]

Just to be clear, I'm only talking about using the 32-bit version of MC, on a 64-bit version of Windows.

This doesn't impact the system's security at all. At least not any more than running any other 32-bit application, including all of the ones built into Windows (Windows Media Player, for example). First of all, ASLR matters far less on applications that can't address huge amounts of RAM because of the attack vector it is protecting against*. And also, perhaps more importantly, because the WoW64 emulator that they're running inside does support those features, and can protect the kernel via the emulation layer to some degree.

But, either way, it is a small difference. Good to know you can disable it and "fix" G-Force until Soundspectrum is able to figure out how to fix it. If they are, indeed, only building against Windows 7 x64, that would definitely explain how they'd never seen the issue.

* And, for this discussion in particular, it matters not at all, because the difference between "standard" ASLR (which is supported for 32-bit applications on Windows 10) and High-Entropy ASLR (which is not) is that Standard ASLR can only use the first 44-bits of virtual memory space to create entropy, whereas HEASLR removes the 44-bit limit. Since, of course, a 32-bit application can't address more than 44-bits of virtual memory, HEASLR is irrelevant for them.

My understanding was that ASLR is still more secure by default for 64-bit applications than 32-bit applications running on a 64-bit OS even without high entropy ASLR, as it's still making use of that 2TB virtual address space (at least Process Explorer reports that).
Since your link mentions it, MC does not appear to support Control Flow Guard but that does not require any settings to be changed, and it's far from being the only program which does not support it.
 
Regardless, I have now received a response from SoundSpectrum support suggesting this as a temporary solution, saying that they hope to have this issue fixed next week.

[glynor]

My understanding was that ASLR is still more secure by default for 64-bit applications than 32-bit applications running on a 64-bit OS even without high entropy ASLR, as it's still making use of that 2TB virtual address space (at least Process Explorer reports that).

Sure. I didn't mean it wasn't. Sorry if my post was confusing.

[JustinChase]

I have found that Media Center is significantly faster when opening, changing views etc now - though that may change once I get things (somewhat) back to how they were.

I'd be interested in what you find here.  I've been unhappy with the slowness of MC for almost as long as I can remember.  I bring it up from time to time, but nothing ever comes of it.  I once got some information from Matt that MC seemed to be searching for an R:/ drive and that was slowing my MC, but I haven't had an R:/ drive for well over a decade, so I never figured out how or why MC was doing this.  Maybe that's still my issue, but changing views or opening a view to browse, or nearly anything I do in MC usually results in a lag of at least several seconds, sometimes minutes, sometimes hanging forever.  I've tried spinning up all my NAT drives, which seems to help, but I still get laggy response too frequently.

If MC wasn't so great at what it does, I'd have dropped it long ago over this, I silently hate the constant, unavoidable lag I face almost always while using it. /rant

Hopefully you find a way to get your custom stuff back into a clean MC to keep your speed and your work in tact.  Please share if so.

[JustinChase]

... it's looking like a lot of work to try and migrate over all of my presets, templates, import settings etc.

Which is why I've requested from time to time to make these things modular/shareable, so we can move these bits around separately.  All or nothing is a choice which forces me to keep my customizations, regardless of any issues it may cause.  I wouldn't even know where to begin to recreate all my stuff on a new install.

Theater views
view schemes
smartlists
DLNA views
custom sortings
import rules
regex stuff in so many places
etc

way too much to have to recreate; impossible I think.

[JimH]

I'd be interested in what you find here.  I've been unhappy with the slowness of MC for almost as long as I can remember.  I bring it up from time to time, but nothing ever comes of it.  I once got some information from Matt that MC seemed to be searching for an R:/ drive and that was slowing my MC, but I haven't had an R:/ drive for well over a decade, so I never figured out how or why MC was doing this.

Why don't you start a thread on this?

Did you try searching for R:?

[JustinChase]

I have a few times in the past, nothing has ever come of it.  I'll try to get another one started soon with details and logs.

[millst]

Anyone hear anything new? I've only had people from their forum blaming Microsoft or telling me to install Windows 7. Not very productive.

-tm

[RD James]

Nothing yet. I'm assuming that they're just continuing to work on it, and it wasn't as easy to solve as they first thought.
Disabling high entropy ASLR for Media Center does still work, but as I reported in another topic, I am experiencing some instability with MC when G-Force is enabled if the WDM driver is in use: https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,116050.0.html
 
That one doesn't seem like it should be too difficult for JRiver to fix, either by enabling per-zone visualization options, or an option to disable visualizations with the WDM driver. The underlying issue with the WDM driver constantly stopping/starting connections is something they don't seem to want to fix.

[Robert Taylor]

Just got latest G-Force Beta version release notes via email:

---
*** G-Force 5.8.2b1 is now available

- Added setting 'Prevent Display Sleep'
- Improved compatibility with Windows screensavers.
- Addressed JRiver Media Center crash on x64.
- Major updates to Windows no longer require G-Force reinstallation.
- Working-around iTunes for Windows issue causing freeze/lockup.
- Fixed OpenGL/Direct3D toggle setting on Windows.
---

[Hendrik]

That beta version does indeed run with MC24 x64 without crashing and without changing Windows Defender settings.

[RD James]

If anyone else is wondering, you have to register for beta access here: https://www.soundspectrum.com/support/beta_list.html

[Helibaby]

Hi,

Soundspectrum released Aeon 4.10 and G-Force 5.82 which are now compatible with MC 64 Bit.

Regards,
Helibaby

[millst]

Upgraded to 64-bit MC24 today, but Aeon 4.10 [trial] is not working for me. MC crashes when I right-click in the display area to select Aeon.

0010625: 1232: Playback: CDisplayPlugin::LoadPlugin: Start
0010625: 1232: Playback: CDisplayPlugin::LoadPlugin: Plugin: Aeon
0010625: 1232: General: TopLevelExceptionFilter: Unhandled exception -- program crashing
0010625: 1232: General: TopLevelExceptionFilter: Message: 34768, wParam: 2099864597744, lParam: 0
0010625: 1232: General: RunProgram: Start
0010625: 1232: General: RunProgram: Filename: C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center 24\JRCrashHandler.exe / Parameters: JRCrashInfo7072

Is this actually working for others?

-tm

[Awesome Donkey]

Perhaps a longshot, but make sure you're using the 64-bit version of the Aeon plugin.

[millst]

Looks okay. I see C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center 24\Visualizations\Aeon_JMC.x64.dll (357,408 bytes / version 4.1.0.8204). That's the DLL the crash dump indicated was loaded.

G-Force works every so slightly better. I can actually pull up the menu and choose it, then it crashes.

-tm

[millst]

Bump, is anyone actually using either of the latest (Aeon 4.10 or G-Force 5.82) releases on Windows 10 (04/18 update)? Curious if it's broke for everyone or just me.

-tm

[RD James]

No issues with G-Force here, on Windows 10 1803.

[millst]

Thanks, good data point. Based on that and advice from somebody on the SS forums, I completely uninstalled plugins and MC. Good news after reinstalling, Aeon is working again. Bad news, as soon as I restore my library/settings, it stops working.

To no avail, I spent a lot of time messing around with my MC settings to try and get Aeon to come back. Kind of a pain, but think I'm just going to redo my settings manually (a few at a time, periodically checking on Aeon functionality) until I'm back in business.

-tm