Hella Solutions blog: "Document. Share. Inspire."

If you run Pro-Tools on Windoze then listen up: DON’T upgrade to Internet Explorer 8 (a recent Windoze Update offered by MS). What happened to me and apparently many others on the ProToolsUsers forum is that after installing the update and you try and open the ProTools program, it won’t open! Ugh! What a pain!

Anyway, I had to use a (free) third-party uninstaller to properly uninstall IE8 and once I did things are back to normal. I just wish it hadn’t taken 8 1/2 hours to figure this out. Another reason why you should have a machine dedicated to only your media work and not connected to the Internet. Obviously the problem is being able to afford two machines.

Anyway, I hope this helps someone spend a lot less time figuring out what the heck is going on and instead working on their projects.

audio tips, computers pro tools

If in your travels around the web you pick up some kind of virus or what not that switches your desktop image with the image to the left and then continually warns you about your a/v codecs being corrupted, Don’t Believe It! It’s a total scam! In most cases the “Update Now” is a hyper-link to a web site trying to sell you some kind of “security” software (currently one of the sites is wincodecpro.com). Don’t give them your credit card info or anything like that. IT’S A SCAM! Instead, enjoy the next many hours undoing all the things their little program does to your system. Here are my findings that should assist you in recovering:

1) Look for any new folders in your ‘Program Files’ directory (such as one called Media System). And delete it! Warning be sure this is not part of a program folder that you want! So, what you should find in this folder are three files: a)a .gif file; b)an .htlm file; c) and an .exe file (likely named wmptray.exe). Open the gif file and html and see what they are. You should be able to tell if they are legit or not.

2) Do an anti-virus scan and malware/adware scan. Install a firewall (i.e. ZoneAlarm) and do not allow wmptray.exe to access any websites other than something at microsoft.com!

3) Your ‘Task Manager’ may get disabled so you will likely have to use a program like the Eusing Free Registry Cleaner to view your start up programs. Again, look for the link C:\Program Files\Media System\wmptray.exe and disable this. As far as getting your ‘Task Mangager’ back? I haven’t figured it out quite yet so if you have any knowledge please post a reply to help me and others who fall into this trap.

Good luck.

computers

I’m a PC user, but not one of those corporate-loving folks that takes sides on the ridiculous corp-friendly Mac versus PC debate. I find the whole thing quite stupid. I’ve just been around PC’s most and that’s what I feel comfortable using but I hate Windoze as much as anybody. The only thing is I’ve not seen any other system that makes enough changes to convince me there is any real difference worth adopting – choose your poison. I’d like to move on to Linux, personally, but then I can’t run a lot of the software I use to make a living. Anyway, I found this article stating that Apple has issued 42 software fixes! Is that company slipping or something? I thought everything was always perfect right out of their wonderfully conceived packaging?

computers

This morning I was reading an article on the Southern California fires and came across this bit:

The lucky ones will find their homes still standing amid a blackened landscape. Thousands of others are not so fortunate.

Robert Sanders returned to a smoldering mound that once was his rented house in the San Diego neighborhood of Rancho Bernardo.

Among the possessions the 56-year-old photographer lost were his transparencies, melted inside a fire-resistant box, and a photograph of his father.

“I’ve lost my history,” Sanders said. “All the work I’ve done for the past 30 years, it’s all destroyed.”

A not so gentle reminder to always back your work up. What you want to do is store your back-ups off site (meaning don’t keep them at the same location as the originals). This should go for any format you are working – film, audio, written…it can be a bit of a pain to do this but what hurts more is the above example – try restoring your work from nothing. But once you set a routine going it gets easier. The minimum schedule for people doing regular work should be a monthly back up. Be aware that not all storage mediums are equal. CD-Roms are more stable than DVD-Roms but yes they have much less capacity…to read more, WikiPedia has a pretty good break down on the subject.

Why not take this weekend to get yourself backed up…in the long run you will thank yourself.

p.s. one tangental point are those movies on DVD and music on CD you paid a lot of money for. under current law the greedy, shortsighted bastards at the RIAA and MPAA have made it “illegal” to back up your legally purchased media. basically, if you lose it you have to pay for it…again. great deal for those guys but the consumer gets screwed big time. totally bogus, i know. the easiest program i know of to deal with this on a PC is SlySoft’s AnyDVD and CloneDVD. AnyDVD is nice as it strips the copy protection off of both CDs and DVDs and allows you to then back up YOUR media using other burning programs like CloneDVD. CloneDVD is a good program for backing up DVD movies and works along side AnyDVD. For you Mac people’s, a popular program called Mac the Ripper seems to be best. So, what are you waiting for? You have two days to get backing up!

p.p.s. share your back-up success and horror stories using the “Comment” link directly under this text..

audio training, computers