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[marko]

I've spent a few days now trying to get MC set up with Windows 8.1 to my liking, and it's not working out too well.

This is mainly down to my insistence in using the PlayingNow plugin, something which those that know me, is a must have.
The problem with it, is that when running normally, the plugin does not recognise the registration information (its own) and simply displays "EXPIRED" all over the pop ups. If I set compatibility to 'run as administrator', it works fine, but then, heyho, Windows won't run a program as administrator at startup...

I tried setting MC startup to 'Nothing', then using scheduler to run media server with highest privileges at user logon, but while this works, it does not cover updates as the server does not get restarted after updating.

So, finally, I have set "EnableLUA" to zero in the registry to completely disable UAC, and in the same process, disable Modern UI apps and potentially expose the system, all for the sake of getting an MC plugin to work correctly.

Can anyone think of an alternative way to get this working without disabling UAC?

I've attached the latest PlayingNow dll file. As JRiver own the code now, I thought perhaps Hendrik could remove the registration check if he had a spare moment or two, if that's all it would take?

Other than that, Windows 8.1 has quite pleasantly surprised me.

-marko

[glynor]

If you disable UAC, it breaks Metro completely.  Just a word to the wise...

[Hendrik]

The plugin is so old that I can't even compile it properly in any modern compiler without starting to re-work it... so don't expect any fast fixes here, sorry.

[dean70]

It is probably trying to write to a location (either file or registry) that it doesnt have permissions to. It may be something that can be corrected by granting Users security group write access to that location.

[glynor]

I bet that's what it is...

Try granting the logged-in user Full Control on whatever folder the plugin's DLL installs to.  Windows 8 doesn't give users write access to the C:\Program Files\ directory structures (for good reason), but this breaks the behavior of legacy applications that write (logs and whatnot) to their own directories.

Often running as admin fixes these issues (but running MC as Admin is unsupported and known to cause weirdness).

[marko]

Hendrik, thanks for looking. Need to get this thing wired into MC by default. It adds so much functionality it's not easy to live without once you've tried it.

dean, glynor, thanks for the input...
The plugin is installed at F:\Program Files\MC Plugins
It's a place I put stand alone stuff like mp3tag, XnView, Starter and such to save me the hassle of reinstalling. I own the folder and have full control over it.
The plugin config file is at appdata\Roaming\PlayingNow so is all good there.

My gut is telling me that the issue is somewhere in the registry as it's registration orientated, but I don't know where it's failing to read the info from when not running as admin.
I wonder if Revo uninstaller could track what it does when it registers.......

[marko]

It is probably trying to write to a location (either file or registry) that it doesnt have permissions to. It may be something that can be corrected by granting Users security group write access to that location.

Registry. About a half dozen locations! I spent way way too much time getting that all sussed out, but, all good now