INTERACT FORUM
More => Old Versions => Media Center 12 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: Valisystem on December 10, 2006, 02:39:07 pm
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Trying to stay ahead of my clients, so I took the plunge, bought some Vista Business licenses, and installed it last week on a shiny new Dell computer with a nice empty hard drive.
Some of the security enhancements are just as annoying as promised - the dialog boxes popped up by User Account Control really are intolerable, no matter how good the reasons are for them.
MC12 was one of several programs that just refused to be happy until I turned down some of the default security settings. It wouldn't start without a confirming dialog box about whether I really liked the program until I turned off User Account Control. More importantly, it wouldn't hold onto any customized settings until I gave my account local administrator privileges. I had other reasons to do both of those things also, so it's running beautifully and smoothly now, but January 30 is right around the corner if there are things that can be retooled.
If MC12 is minimized while it's on "Playing Now," some Vista previews don't display MC12 correctly - thumbnails in Alt-Tab and from the taskbar are blank. One of the prettiest visual tricks in Windows Vista is the angled 3D display of open windows - it might have some fancy name but the button is labeled "Switch between windows." If MC12 is minimized while it's on "Playing Now," then a space is made for it in that 3d angled group, but MC12 is invisible. Hmm.
For what it's worth . . .
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MC12 was one of several programs that just refused to be happy until I turned down some of the default security settings. It wouldn't start without a confirming dialog box about whether I really liked the program until I turned off User Account Control. More importantly, it wouldn't hold onto any customized settings until I gave my account local administrator privileges. I had other reasons to do both of those things also, so it's running beautifully and smoothly now, but January 30 is right around the corner if there are things that can be retooled.
They had some good ideas with account control, but dropped the ball. I'll spare you a rant.
There may be some refinements to how we interact with account control in the coming months, but even $1000 Microsoft programs like Visual Studio get neutered by it.
If MC12 is minimized while it's on "Playing Now," some Vista previews don't display MC12 correctly - thumbnails in Alt-Tab and from the taskbar are blank. One of the prettiest visual tricks in Windows Vista is the angled 3D display of open windows - it might have some fancy name but the button is labeled "Switch between windows." If MC12 is minimized while it's on "Playing Now," then a space is made for it in that 3d angled group, but MC12 is invisible. Hmm.
Try a different visualization. Perhaps Vista can't make a thumbnail of a DirectX or OpenGL surface. (GForce, 3D Pong, etc.)
Otherwise, I'm not sure what we would be doing that's "special" although we'll take a look.
For what it's worth . . .
Thanks for the report. We've been doing quite a bit of Vista testing, and believe we're in good shape for Vista.
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Try a different visualization. Perhaps Vista can't make a thumbnail of a DirectX or OpenGL surface. (GForce, 3D Pong, etc.)
Yup, that's the right track, I can only reproduce it with GForce, but it's odd - Vista can thumbnail the animated GForce display in most contexts. The only time it doesn't display correctly on my system is when MC12 is minimized - and even then it's inconsistent, occasionally it displays just fine in the thumbnails and Windows Flip displays, occasionally it goes blank in the thumbnail or causes the entire MC window to disappear from the Flip display.
So mildly interesting but probably not your problem. And as to UAC - my guess is that instructions for users about how to deactivate user account control and elevate their privileges will be very popular reading in about sixty days . . .
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I would think that now that the activation server is hacked/leaked it's pretty interesting stuff right away! ;)
Oh, in case anybody wonders: Click account picture in the start menu, "Turn User Control Acound On or Off", turn it off and restart. ANd there's a lot of nice guides out about elevating privileges, like http://searchwindowssecurity.techtarget.com/generic/0,295582,sid45_gci1185017,00.html
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There is still a problem with syncing to a Smartphone using MC12/Vista. My Motorola Q does not appear under Drives+Devices. It does appear and work in Windows Media Player.
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I would think that now that the activation server is hacked/leaked it's pretty interesting stuff right away! ;)
Oh, in case anybody wonders: Click account picture in the start menu, "Turn User Control Acound On or Off", turn it off and restart. ANd there's a lot of nice guides out about elevating privileges, like http://searchwindowssecurity.techtarget.com/generic/0,295582,sid45_gci1185017,00.html
Turning UAC off will break some apps. Like installing Adobe Reader 8. UAC is responsible for more than annoying users. It virtualizes a few items, user directories are one of them for some apps under some circumstances. Clear??? Me either, but there are reasons not to disable UAC. Or at least to know if this or that does not work properly, turn UAC on and see if that helps.
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You can run a single Vista application as administrator rather than turning User Account Control off (which is the same as running your computer as Administrator). I'm not in front of my Vista machine, but I believe the setting is on the properties for the program's shortcut. My experience was the same as the above. MC would not run properly unless run as Administrator. Turning User Account Control off makes it a LOT more likely that you'll get infected with malware, so just run programs as Administrator rather than the whole machine.
I've had a bunch of iPod sync issues with MC12 and Vista that do not exist under MC11 and XP. These are described here:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=37351.0
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Build 130 seems to work perfectly under Vista, with UAC turned on and no local administrator credentials. . .
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Well, I have been running the trial version with everything security turned off for two months or so, and nothing bad has happened. Common sense really beats any UAC any day. ;)
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I found a very odd behaviour with MC130 and the library server. I made several changes to my library on the server, but the client kept seeing the 'old' library. I tried various things to make it refresh, but to no avail. Eventually I thought about the recent change to stop running as admin, and I tried running MC as admin. I was then able to see the updates on the client.
I did some more testing, and found that the only way to see a library change on the client is by re-loading the library from the client while MC is running as admin on the server. After the initial 'refresh' it's fine to run without elevation. I presume there is some cached library on the server used only for sharing which is located in a 'system location' which MC cannot access unless running as admin, right? I guess the easiest solution would be to reloacte this to a non-system location??
EDIT : I found the problem. Since I was upgrading from an older version of MC12, there was a copy of the MC server library inside the Program Files\J River\MC12 directory. Due to the way that 'VirtualStore' works, it will look first in the 'system' location and only check the VirtualStore if the file is not found. So the solution was to delete the library from the Program Files\J River\MC12 directoy which forces the library to be updated in VirtualStore instead.
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Not sure it's a Vista-specific problem for sure, but MC 12 does not display a Rip CD option in Media Center in the AutoPlay options. Play CD is available. Rhapsody does display Import CD from Autoplay menu, so it's not completely neutering 3rd Party app functionality in this regard.
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A few problems I've had with Vista and MC12:
Small one:
When selecting multiple files using the mouse it won't scroll.
Another small one:
When selecting Burn Disc - Data CD or DVD, the Next button appears partially below the Action Window.
Bigger one:
(Not entirely sure this is Vista specific, but don't remember it on XP - can't do dual monitors on my XP machine to check!)
When using dual monitors and watching a DVD, if I move MC from one screen to another it restarts the playback (although it then realises that it's played before and goes back to where it was).
Obviously most the time when playing a DVD you wouldn't want to move it from one screen to another, but I've been playing a couple of music concert DVDs which I'm only listening to rather than actually watching, and then I may put it onto my second (laptop) monitor and it starts again. If I then minimize it to the taskbar it also does this, and then again when it is maximised. Library Videos skip very slightly but are otherwise OK.
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The more and more i see of Vista the more and more it sucks, microsoft really dropped the ball on this one and they are getting hammered from everyone.
Security is an issue all ready, driver support is a joke, any major new part that was worth anything was hacked out because they couldnt get it done on time or it didnt work correctly, now promised later in service packs, yeah right.
TC ?
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Not sure it's a Vista-specific problem for sure, but MC 12 does not display a Rip CD option in Media Center in the AutoPlay options. Play CD is available. Rhapsody does display Import CD from Autoplay menu, so it's not completely neutering 3rd Party app functionality in this regard.
Are you referring to the Media Insert drop under the CD option tab?