Complete System Lockup

stricko · Post by **stricko** » Sat Dec 18, 2004 1:04 pm

Hi, I'm a newbie here but this is an old old problem of mine. I'm a DVD Workshop 1.3 user, with hundreds of succesful DVDs created and burnt. However, periodically, say onece every six months, DVD Workshop dies on me, big time.

The problem occurs after a project has been created, just before it is finalised. From the Finish screen, I hit the "Make Disc" button, choose "Best Quality" and them.... (dramatic pause) absolutely nothing. The whole system just locks up. Ctrl-ALt-Delete works, and shows DVD Workshop as "not responding", but when I try and end the application, I get a message something like "cannot end because the application is debugging", and the system locks again. There seems to be no way around this, and I have to power down and reboot.

Once the problem occurs there seems to be nothing to get around it. New projects will not finalise, existing projects that have finalised before will not now finalise. I've de-installed and re-installed, deleted directories etc etc.

The PC restarts OK, but DVD Workshop still has the same problem. I only way I have found to get around this is to rebuild the software environment from scratch. And I mean scratch; formatted disk, complete Windows reload, everything. Then everything is Ok for a few months, and then, it all happens again.

I created projects, finalised them and burnt good disks yesterday, but then it failed this morning.

FYI The environment is P4 1.8, 1gb memory, lots of disk space (SATA and IDE), W2K (bang up to date with patches), Dazzle DVC2 capture card.

Anyone got any ideas before I start rebuilding again..... (and yes I know I should be using something like Ghost, it's on order!)

I

phd · Post by **phd** » Sat Dec 18, 2004 5:08 pm

Don't know whether or not this will help. These are a couple of general suggestions.

1 Can you do a windows system restore point in Win2K?
2 Can you go to Add/Remove programs and repair DWS 1.3? If that works, you could reinstall the patches

stricko · Post by **stricko** » Mon Dec 20, 2004 10:00 am

Thanks for the tips.

"system restore point" is a new one on me, I'll check it out.

On the repair front, yep, tried repair, remove/replace. Didn't work. My guess is that it's not a problem with Workshop itself, but something external that Workshop is reacting to.

I've rebuilt the system over the weekend as there was something that I needed to do urgently, and everything is back to normal. Until the next time.....

stricko · Post by **stricko** » Mon Jan 24, 2005 2:42 pm

Damn damn damn

I have rebuilt my system to a truly alarming degree. Different capture card (Hauppauge PVR150 instead of Dazzle DVC2), new DVD-ROM drive, Windows XP Pro instead of W2K, lots of old video software not installed, some new stuff added.

AND IT HAS JUST HAPPENED AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

New project, with a single MPG file, a few chapters, no menu, dead easy huh? Hit the "Make Disk" button, and then................ nothing. Complete lock up, Ctrl-ALt-Del will come up, and shows DVD Workshop not responding, but when you end the application, it hangs again. Only solution is a manual power down. Tried again, same thing.

Looks like I will be rebuilding again.

PLEASE HELP

stricko · Post by **stricko** » Tue Jan 25, 2005 12:13 pm

I also raised the problem with ULead. I'm sure I had asked them before, and got nothing back, but this time they have responded. I got the following reply..

1) Uninstall Ulead DVD Workshop from control panel Add/Remove programs.

2) Delete folder {A04BF5DC-6DD3-4B6D-BABD-B1BC5DB23CF0}in
C:\Program Files\InstallShield Installation Information (Please set
"Show hidden files and folders." in folder option in OS)

3) Please del the folder "Ulead DVD Workshop" folder in C:\program
files\ulead system

4) Run Regedit from Start/Run in Windows task bar

5) Delete folder {A04BF5DC-6DD3-4B6D-BABD-B1BC5DB23CF0} in
KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\
(If you always see Ulead DVD Workshop file name showed in the
Add/Remove Program, please do point 5)

6) Then reinstall it again.

Does this look familiar to anyone?

I'll be trying it out tonight, and I'll let you know.

Paul

phd · Post by **phd** » Tue Jan 25, 2005 1:28 pm

Don't know that much about it, but it looks like they're asking you to remove items that would affect a completely clean reinstall without having to reinstall windows.

stricko · Post by **stricko** » Tue Jan 25, 2005 2:05 pm

That was my conclusion as well. I'm trying to hold off doing another Windows rebuild as my broadband is down at the moment. I was hoping to use Ghost to produce a nice clean disk image, but without all the latest software drops, it's not worth the effort.

One good thing to come out of this is that I learnt a lot more about Neros DVD authoring capabilities. Many of my own DVDs don't have a menu structure, just chapter points to allow rapid scrolling. I've found that Nero will happily do this, if you know where to look.

stricko · Post by **stricko** » Thu Jan 27, 2005 9:57 am

No good. did complete de-install and cleanup as suggested, re-installed, and the damn thing still locks.

phd · Post by **phd** » Thu Jan 27, 2005 11:40 am

Could it be that either some other software is conflicting or something has gone amiss with your computer?

I know personally I found a software conflict with Ulead and another editor that was installed as part of a package. It took a while to track it down. Once I uninstalled it, Ulead worked again.

I had another conflict with a proprietary capture card driver. In that case, I could control it by the order of installation.

If you do a complete reinstall again, I would suggest just installing Workshop and confirm functionality. If you have a clean install with just Workshop at least you've narrowed it down to its no longer playing well for some reason, possibly hardware related.

One other thought and this is a long shot. The PVR150 probably came with a version of DVD Movie Factory. When you do an auto-install, DMF is installed as well. Did you do the patches and updates for both DVDWS and DMF. Don't know if it will help. I have multiple Ulead products on my machine and always update them all. When I have to do a reinstall or clean install, I try to do it in the order of oldest Ulead product first to avoid a potential overwrite of older drivers on top of newer ones.

stricko · Post by **stricko** » Thu Jan 27, 2005 3:26 pm

Thanks for the input. The problem with DVD Workshop is intermittant. On this last system rebuild, Workshop was one of the first things I loaded, tested, and it was running fine. I had been suspicious that it was a conflict with my old Dazzle DVC2 card and the curious mixture of software required to keep that running, but I have not installed any of that on the new build. After the rebuild, and prior to the lock-up I had authored several DVDs successfully, proving that DVD Workshop was indeed running. Between the last succesful use and the lock-up, I don't recall loading any new software, drivers or anything else.

As for Moviefactory, I deliberately did not install it as part of the PVR150 install, just in case of problems. I already have a copy of Moviefactory that I bought in the early days, but then found that it was not flexible enough. So I bought an upgrade to Workshop but have to have my Moviestar disk in the drive to get through the license check every time I install.

I think that kinda negates most of your points, but if I missed anything subtle, let me know. I've pushed it back to Ulead as well. It would be intersting if I could put a debugger on it as it fails.....

phd · Post by **phd** » Thu Jan 27, 2005 4:23 pm

I'm kinda out of ideas now. With you using XP now and switching to the PVR150 from the DVC2 that, I assume, would have improved stability.

HT Chien, do you have any other ideas?

pauley · Post by **pauley** » Fri Jan 28, 2005 6:06 am

This has happened to me with DVDWS 2.x.
I was able to avoid a complete system reinstall by
1) remove DVDWS using Add/Remove Programs
2) reinstall DVDWS but IN A DIFFERENT DIRECTORY.

Pauley

stricko · Post by **stricko** » Mon Feb 07, 2005 12:16 pm

Latest update. System completely rebuilt, and checkpointed with Ghost. DVD Workshop 1.3 installed and working fine, for the moment. One little wierdo, when setting chapter points (at 5 min intervals) the first chapter point displays OK, the second stays on the previous image on the preview screen. On the chapter list it is OK, and the resulting image is OK. Never seen it before this rebuild, and it's intermittant.

htchien · Post by **htchien** » Thu Feb 10, 2005 8:52 pm

Ulead products usually lock up when some unstable video/audio CODEC is installed in the system and it might not be fixed by remove/install. Next time when you get locked up again, try to use AVICodec to find out how many CODECs are installed in your system and list them in here.

Hope this helps.

H.T.

stricko · Post by **stricko** » Fri Feb 11, 2005 4:02 pm

So far it is behaving itself. I may do a snap shot to see what Codecs are installed now, as a comparison if it fails again. Thanks for the tip.