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Multiple issues with MC16 beta 16.0.39

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Pegritz:
I understand the 16 is still in beta and will almost certainly improve as development continues.  I certainly *hope* it will eventually be worth the money. I've run betas of pretty much every version of MC I've ever used, and I've never encountered as many annoyances as there are in this one.

Before installing MC16, I removed the IE9 Release Candidate and verified that all IE-related files had been rolled back to stable V8, even though since MC16 has apparently switched to the Chromium engine this may no longer even be an issue. Nonetheless, I didn't want a bad software interaction (especially an IE-related one) fouling my tryout of the beta. Once it was installed (and I performed a completely clean install; there were no other versions of MC on this machine, nor had there even been before), I played around with it for a while and found it quite to my liking, and figured purchasing the upgrade was warranted. I'd used MC up until v13, I believe, which proved so buggy and annoying that I switched over to another program--but MC16 offered a LOT of great features, and $17 seemed like a reasonable investment in a software version that clearly offered more.

But since I purchased MC16, it's caused all manner of annoying behaviour, such as:


* When MC16 is open, my mouse's scroll wheel will completely stop working periodically in all applications. I've verified that this ONLY happens when MC16 is running, and it certainly has never happened before.
* MC16 never seems to work right when using any audio system other than DirectSound. None of my other audio apps (and I have *quite* a few) have any trouble using ASIO, WASAPI, or even WaveOut--but MC16 skips and stutters *badly* when using anything other than DirectSound...and even *then* it skips and stutters, just not as much. I've even run MC16 with no other apps running and this still happens, so I'm pretty sure it's not a processor- or HD-access-rate-related issue.
* Video playback is *incredibly* annoying. When watching fullscreen video, MC16 will randomly minimize, right-clicking won't bring up the usual context menu, and playback controls appear and disappear randomly.
* Auto-import is completely screwed. I have it set to import from only one folder, and have neither "make thumbnails" nor "get cover art" checked...but startup would take upwards of five, even ten minutes sometimes when "Run auto-import" was selected--which is odd, considering I haven't added or otherwise even touched the indicated folder in days.
* And finally, whenever MC16 is running, other apps experienced weird, periodic freezes, and MC frequently freezes itself when switched back to from another app. MC16 won't generate a standard Win7 "not responding" dialogue, but no amount of clicking or keyboard shortcuts will work with it and even clicking on its icon in the taskbar does nothing. The only way I've found to shut it down when it does this is to kill the process directly from the Task Manager
I will gladly provide system specs and any other information if asked.  Fortunately, there are NO problems when MC16 is not running, so I'm not going to uninstall and reinstall it anytime soon unless advised to do so.

(PS: I've browsed through other posts on the forum and haven't seen anyone else experiencing the same trouble I have, so I wonder if the problem lies with my machine, and whether simply un/reinstalling MC16 might solve the problems.)

D. Pegritz

JimH:
Would you mind rebooting and then reinstalling MC 16.0.39.

There are two links in my signature that might help.  Stability and Weird Problems.  Please try Stability first.

A couple of your problem suggest there might be something running in the background that is causing problems.

The video problem is probably a driver.

What virus checker are you using?  Try uninstalling it just as a test.

In task manager is the CPU at 100% when you're having trouble?

Did you follow MS instructions on uninstalling IE9?

What you're seeing is far from normal, but if you can be patient, we can sort it out. 

Pegritz:
I'll try everything you've listed, and will report back ASAP with results! Thank you for the suggestions--I'll get on them immediately!

D. pegritz

Pegritz:

--- Quote from: JimH on February 27, 2011, 07:08:09 am ---Would you mind rebooting and then reinstalling MC 16.0.39.

There are two links in my signature that might help.  Stability and Weird Problems.  Please try Stability first.

A couple of your problem suggest there might be something running in the background that is causing problems.

The video problem is probably a driver.

What virus checker are you using?  Try uninstalling it just as a test.

In task manager is the CPU at 100% when you're having trouble?

Did you follow MS instructions on uninstalling IE9?

What you're seeing is far from normal, but if you can be patient, we can sort it out. 

--- End quote ---

1. I've un/reinstalled three times, with complete reboots in between. No difference: the mouse-wheel scrolling effect still happens, and now I've noticed that Google Chrome becomes unresponsive in a variety of different ways--most notably, though, text-input boxes become completely unresponsive for long periods of time whenever MC16 is running. When MC16 is *not* running, everything is fine. The scrolling issue happens in all apps, though, not just Chrome. Is it possible that the Chromium rendering engine in MC16 is interacting weirdly with Chrome?

2. I checked out the Stability and Weird Issues articles, but didn't find anything in them that seemed related to the experiences I've been having. I went through the Stability article carefully and checked out everything I could there, but most of the points in the article were either ineffectual or unrelated.

3. The second time I reinstalled, the only apps running beside MC16 were AnyDVD HD 6.6.4.2, my Steam client, Microsoft Security Essentials, PowerISO, and AdAware. The behaviour still persisted. The third time, I also ran Google Chrome and Skype. In the latter case, the scroll problem was VERY noticeable in both apps. I imported a folder of about 1000 mp3 files just to see if the problem was caused during import, but it persisted looong after the import was done. In fact, I rebooted my computer a fourth time and checked MC16 after my boot sequence was completely finished: same thing.

4. I updated my video driver (GeForce 9600 GT) to the most recent stable release. No effect. I tried to play a simple .avi file and the weird jumping back and forth from display to desktop happened every couple of seconds.

5. I use Microsoft Security Essentials 64-bit, and I am LOATHE to turn it off for ANY software install. I disengaged it for a bit, though, and it didn't make any difference to MC16: the weird stuff still happened.

6. Oddly enough, no, it *doesn't* spike my processor usage--nor does it eat up an inordinate amount of memory. I've kept a close eye on my Task Manager's CPU graph and system resources during install and operation, and I haven't noticed any odd processor/memory performance issues.

7. Yep. To the letter. I didn't have any trouble with removing the update or running the restored version of IE8.

At present, I've got the software uninstalled and, honestly, have no interest in keeping it around. If you'd like, though, I'll reinstall it and try out any further suggestions you may have! If not, though, I'm going to wait until the next build and see if *that* makes any difference.

D.

JimH:
Microsoft Security Essentials is known to cause problems.  I think there is an entry in the Weird Problems thread.

Something about your OS is confused at the moment.

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