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More => Old Versions => JRiver Media Center 21 for Windows => Topic started by: Trumpetguy on June 21, 2016, 04:46:31 am

Title: WDM driver disappears from Audio Devices
Post by: Trumpetguy on June 21, 2016, 04:46:31 am
Latest couple of builds (e.g. 088 and 090): WDM driver disappears from Windows (7 and 10) audio devices. It is checked in Options-General-Features. To get it back, I have to uncheck it, restart MC, check it and restart MC again. Then it suddenly re-appears.

It may or may not have something to do with what seems to be a serious error in the latest Tidal PC app build (problem started quite recently). I have not been able to pinpoint it, but it seems that if JRiver Audio Driver is used in Tidal, and if the Tidal setting is set to Exclusive Mode, BSoD occurs both in Win 7 and 10 (have to cycle power on PC to reset). WDM disappearing may be correlated with this, or not.

I am posting this to see if others experience the same.
Title: Re: WDM driver disappears from Audio Devices
Post by: RD James on June 21, 2016, 09:07:13 am
Uncheck it, and restart JRiver so that the device is uninstalled.
Right-click JRiver and choose "run as administrator".
This may (or may not) run JRiver with a blank library. That's fine.
Now install the WDM driver from that and quit JRiver.

That fixed this issue for me.
The only remaining issue is that it still seems to uninstall and reinstall the driver with every JRiver update, which resets all my WDM settings. (resets to stereo instead of 5.1)
Title: Re: WDM driver disappears from Audio Devices
Post by: Matt on June 21, 2016, 09:26:37 am
Uncheck it, and restart JRiver so that the device is uninstalled.
Right-click JRiver and choose "run as administrator".
This may (or may not) run JRiver with a blank library. That's fine.
Now install the WDM driver from that and quit JRiver.

I'm confused by this because we install and uninstall the driver with Package Installer and that should prompt for elevation when it's run.

So you shouldn't need to run MC as administrator at all.

Do you really have to?

We're fighting a licensing problem where the UAC prompt doesn't show and it's possible there's something we're missing.

So let us know.

Thanks.
Title: Re: WDM driver disappears from Audio Devices
Post by: Guybrush on June 21, 2016, 09:36:24 am
I had the WDM driver disappear on me the other day without a new build. Was playing games in Steam and all was well, then the sound cut out. I checked MC and it wasn't reading "IPC" anymore, so I restarted Steam. This time it came on with the big picture jingle at 100% volume. I checked my sound devices and WDM was gone. No trace of it. Had to reinstall it. That has only happened once, but has made me a little nervous. Anyone else seen this?
Title: Re: WDM driver disappears from Audio Devices
Post by: RD James on June 21, 2016, 11:22:57 am
I'm confused by this because we install and uninstall the driver with Package Installer and that should prompt for elevation when it's run.
So you shouldn't need to run MC as administrator at all.
Do you really have to?
We're fighting a licensing problem where the UAC prompt doesn't show and it's possible there's something we're missing.
So let us know.
Thanks.
I get the UAC prompt for elevated permissions but sometimes it wouldn't update or install the driver correctly 100% of the time and the device would disappear.
After doing this once it worked every time, which is why I suggested it. That was several months ago now.


I had the WDM driver disappear on me the other day without a new build. Was playing games in Steam and all was well, then the sound cut out. I checked MC and it wasn't reading "IPC" anymore, so I restarted Steam. This time it came on with the big picture jingle at 100% volume. I checked my sound devices and WDM was gone. No trace of it. Had to reinstall it. That has only happened once, but has made me a little nervous. Anyone else seen this?
I've not seen that, but if I update JRiver while the WDM driver is the default playback device, it has a habit of crashing a number of applications or not "fully" installing until I reboot the machine.
In the "not fully installed" state it works, but only once I reboot the PC are all the device settings are reset and the device order often changes too.

If I set another audio device as the default before updating JRiver this prevents any programs from crashing and all the settings for it are reset immediately so that when I configure it as a 5.1 device again it sticks until the next update.

I just don't understand why JRiver has to reinstall the driver every time, or if they're going to do that why they can't assign it a unique icon (the MC logo is fine) and preserve your settings.
Title: Re: WDM driver disappears from Audio Devices
Post by: Trumpetguy on June 22, 2016, 01:53:29 am
I always get a UAC prompt when installing JRiver, so I guess running it as admin during installation should not make a difference.

I had the WDM driver disappear on me the other day without a new build. Was playing games in Steam and all was well, then the sound cut out. I checked MC and it wasn't reading "IPC" anymore, so I restarted Steam. This time it came on with the big picture jingle at 100% volume. I checked my sound devices and WDM was gone. No trace of it. Had to reinstall it. That has only happened once, but has made me a little nervous. Anyone else seen this?
Never experienced exactly that, but I have had a number of occasions where JRiver driver disappeared. Then, for some reason, Windows often set my Lynx card as default. This is set fixed to 100% level. I feel I have risked my speakers a couple of times, and it has made me a bit jumpy about using the wdm driver. Luckily, no one else in the family uses (as in are not allowed to) this computer,  mainly because it is a server, not a desktop for any kind of use. But also because omitting a physical pre-amp really increases the risk of wrongdoing. I am considering buying a multichannel preamp again just to increase the system's usability.

Title: Re: WDM driver disappears from Audio Devices
Post by: bblue on June 27, 2016, 05:15:34 pm
I have the WDM driver disappearing as a regular event, though its regularity varies.

One situation that will cause it to disappear is if you have auto-update enabled, and MC does an update right before your machine reboots automatically (or manually) for its updates.

Other times, it will be working at night when I go to bed, but in the morning it's gone!  And that's while actively streaming from VLC streaming a network station, to the MC WDM interface (system default).  All I do is reinstall the same or newer version of MC and hit play on VLC and it goes with no further issue.  This doesn't happen every night, but maybe 20% of the time.  Most of the time I don't even need to hit play on VLC, the link just works.

For any mysterious disappearances of WDM, the simplest thing for me to do is reinstall MC over whatever version is there, and it's fixed.  I have the latest or newest download handy for those cases.

BTW this odd disappearing of WDM has been going on for months.  But there could be different causes for each case.

--Bill
Title: Re: WDM driver disappears from Audio Devices
Post by: Trumpetguy on October 05, 2016, 01:10:37 pm
Updated from 22.0.28 to .32 today, and yey, wdm driver disappeared again. Had to do the disable/enable wdm in Options-Features again. And type in admin pw each time. Which in total sums up to an a bit annoying amount of clicks and time usage.

Is this something the devs could care to look into? Please?