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QuickTime .MOV + Toshiba + Vista = BSOD
Question Guy writes "Apple QuickTime is involved in a troubling problem that doesn't seem to be addressed by any of the major software and hardware manufacturers involved. On Toshiba machines, such as the Protege Tablet M400s, with Windows Vista installed, opening a locally stored QuickTime .MOV causes instant bluescreen. All other video functions seem to be working in other video playback types — even streaming .MOVs work — and there is little to no 'buzz' on the Net that might push any of the parties to investigate or to play nice together (Microsoft for Vista, Intel for the GMA945 chipset, Toshiba for their custom tablet software, Apple for QuickTime). Help, anyone?"
You may try with VLC media player.
Works very well with tons of formats.
Uses its own codecs.
Free and open source.
Available for Windows (and also Mac OS X and Linux).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Why is a story about a guys computer crashing on here?
If it was a problem with a specific model, I could understand it, but it's just one guy!!!
I got a Toshiba Protege M400 about a mont ago. And I have had this problem consitantly. Since I watch alot of Video Podcast using iTunes. I have searched the web for solutions to tis problem and have gotten noware. Hopefully now that it made slashdot somthing will get done about it.
that he blames quicktime for a BSOD...
Nothing but a bad driver, bad hardware, or a *bad kernel* can cause a BSOD (read kernel panic). It doesn't matter that other movie players don't cause it. If the driver's and kernel didn't have a bug, it would be impossible for *any* userspace application, quicktime or otherwise, to cause a kernel panic.
Quicktime isn't the greatest movie player ever... but it couldn't possibly be at the root of this problem. It is clearly simply exposing an underlying problem.
I must say that I've seen a spate of strange crashes and stuff with the last few point updates to QuickTime on both Macs and PCs. The last update solved a few of them, but in my current line of work (which is IT sysadmin for a media company with 200+ machines) QuickTime functioning properly is vital to business.
.mov files. There's a chance it could be an issue with your machine and specific encoding method that certain types of .mov files use. Thirdly, I'd try some other media files in it, like mp4 video or H.264. These can also be played back in other players and success or failure would point you in the direction of whether it's QuickTime or something deeper - such as a graphics driver - at fault.
First port of call would be QuickTime itself. As there are 'known issues' with iTunes and Vista, and we know that QuickTime and iTunes integrate pretty closely, I'd uninstall the iTunes/Quicktime install and try installing just the standalone player. There could be iTunes hooks into QuickTime that might be breaking something. It also makes sure you've got the most recent QuickTime install.
This has fixed a few of the problems I've seen over the past few months.
Secondly, I'd try a variety of different
Thirdly, I'd think back and ask yourself if you've seen any other odd graphic behaviour on your PC recently. That might indicate a driver issue. Make usre in cases like this that you're using the manufacturer approved drivers.
Fourthly, I'd look at downloading Microsoft's Application Compatibility Tools and seeing whether there's anything on your machine that doesn't run under Vista. Specifically look out for items with a graphical angle such as screen managers etc.
Nothing from Apple yet, but you can always checkout the Axiotron ModBook... Sounds interesting.
Drivers can, and bugs in the OS can. User-run programs can only (accidentally) trigger one of those...
If only. The way Microsoft does DRM, much of audio and video processing takes place in kernel space.
TFA concludes by blaming it on Apple. I'm no Apple fanboy, but I don't see that at all. Unless I am misreading TFA, everything worked fine until the patches and updates were installed. I would suggest those are the problem. If they were Tablet updates, that's where the blame lies. If they were Vista updates, then the problem is there. And i agree, this is a support call, not news on /.
Where is the Undo button for my life? Not to mention the Esc key.
The article you probably mean is Peter Gutmann's A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection, which memorably coined the phrase,
At least, we can hope.
you had me at #!
The bit at the bottom that says:
Blaming Apple
I'd say both, but I place the blame more on Apple, the author of the offending application.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Welcome out of the nineties.
MPEG-4 is Quicktime. It doesn't get much more standardized than that.
This isn't news. Quicktime is a horrible piece of software. I have personaly tested about 50 machines with various SCSI controllers in Windows XP and 2003 which either BSOD in Quicktime, or get horrible audio/video syncing problems.
The only commonality was they all used LSI or Adaptec SCSI controllers. Playing off an IDE drive or SATA drive worked fine.
We sent bug reports to Apple and Microsoft, ran traces on the programs, and it always came down to Quicktime.
Microsoft made a hotfix available that was a workaround, something to do with caching the data to page first, then sending it to quicktime, but it was a slow and dirty hack.
Apple said it was the SCSI controllers sending corrupt data, which was rediculous, every single other application, media, worked perfect.
Quicktime shittyness is HARDLY anything new at all.
Brent Jones
The networkmanager applet won't like ANY RaLink chipset/drivers at the moment because networkmanager relies on the driver
;)
1) adhering to the linux wireless toolset (iwconfig...).
The RaLink drivers don't and tend to work via a DAT file. The rt2x00 beta driver fix this
2) Do not work with wpa_supplicant, something that networkmanager also relies on. WEP/WPA/WPA2 is delt with via that same DAT file
Again the rt2x00 beta drivers fix this
there you go
You know that there has been a few update since version 0.01, don't you ?
Seriously, almost any modern MOV file either uses standard MPEG 4 (MPEG-4 SP/H263 and AVC/H264) or some variation of (Sorenson is a derivative of H264). The former is a standard, the later was successfully reverse-engineered and implemented in FFmpeg a couple of years ago.
Even the latest WMV compression formats are currently being implemented into FFmpeg and thus available to VLC.
RealVideo is pretty much everything that is still in use today and not supported by VLC. Specially since the advent of video Podcasts, PSP and cameraphones, there's a strong nove toward standardizing on non proprietary codecs like the various MPEG4.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
No, there's a strong possibility that this is being caused by Vista -- the software works fine on XP on the same hardware, and Vista is supposed to be MORE secure and allow less malicious software to affect the basic OS operation, so how is an application or bad file data causing a BSOD? It should only be causing the application to crash.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
I can't believe this made /. front page either. It's BASIC computer troubleshooting.
-If Quicktime had serious BSOD problems with Vista, we'd have heard about it -- nevermind it's almost impossible for it to cause a BSOD (if not just because not running in kernel mode)
-Similarly, if Vista had serious problems with Quicktime video, we'd find lots of similar evidence...
Which leaves the usual 2 problems:
-a BSOD due to shitty drivers -- most drivers for Vista being shitty right now, so no surprise at all
-or bad/faulty hardware (less likely, but still possible)
As soon as something BSODs, any competent admin would set the box to do a memory dump and analyze it (using basic simple commands) in windbg (it's a lot easier than it sounds). You should be able to find what caused the BSOD real quick in most cases (in this case I'd bet it would be some DLL for his video card's driver). Even most consumers should be able to setup and use error reporting, which does usually give you a half-decent "most probable cause" (it would likely blame his video drivers).
He hasn't done any of this, nor tried updating drivers, or playing using other software (like VLC or MPC).
The blame is on whoever made shitty drivers (or whatever the memory dump points to).
This is a total non-story. It must have made the front page just because there's some MS-bashing potential.
Aloha everyone,
:)
:) Of course, that in part was the point, right?
I'm out here and thanks in part to Slashdot, my M400 tablet is playing quicktime movies like a champ now
The rant below aside, I DO very much appreciate the community thought that went into this, the response was great and that seems to have gotten the attention of Toshiba, which has issued a new RAID driver.
So, for whatever reason I still don't understand, Quicktime was accessing hard drives , those controlled by the SATA RAID controller in the laptop AND the ones hooked up by USB (external drives)in such a different way that the computer BSOD'ed every time.
I don't pretend to understand it fully, I just knew from the start that it was some fundamental level of tinkering I couldn't do on my own.
A hearty thanks to everyone who offered advice, called me or the author an idiot, or delved deeper into information that couldn't have been contained in the paltry few sentances I wrote for the story submission. hehe. I went out to lunch to buy some RAM, and there were 200 posts, so I'm sorry I wasn't more involved in giving MORE information. I know that everyone needed it, but I missed the window on timing, I think... who knew it would get accepted and start up such a fire-storm of responses?
It reminds me of that maxim "Whe you assume, you make an ass out of u and me.
Submit a vexing problem to Slashdot, give just enough information for people to identify it and hope and pray that someone smart, informed, kind slashdotter would know the answer when all the google queries in the world, tech support hours wasted and dead end hunches didn't get me anywhere.
Hooray for everyone!
Aloha everyone,
,thanks in part to Slashdot, my M400 tablet is playing quicktime movies like a champ now :)
:) Of course, that in part was the point, right?
I'm out here in Hawaii and
The rant below aside, I DO very much appreciate the community thought that went into this, the response was great and that seems to have gotten the attention of Toshiba, which has issued a new RAID driver.
So, for whatever reason I still don't understand, Quicktime was accessing hard drives , those controlled by the SATA RAID controller in the laptop AND the ones hooked up by USB (external drives)in such a different way that the computer BSOD'ed every time.
I don't pretend to understand it fully, I just knew from the start that it was some fundamental level of tinkering I couldn't do on my own.
A hearty thanks to everyone who offered advice, called me or the author an idiot, or delved deeper (too deep) into information that couldn't have been contained in the paltry few sentances I wrote for the story submission. hehe. I went out to lunch to buy some RAM, and then there were 200 posts, so I'm sorry I wasn't more involved in giving MORE information. I know that everyone needed it, but I missed the window on timing, I think... who knew it would get accepted and start up such a fire-storm of responses?
It reminds me of that maxim "Whe you assume, you make an ass out of u and me."
Submit a vexing problem to Slashdot, give just enough information for people to identify it and hope and pray that someone smart, informed, kind slashdotter would know the answer when all the google queries in the world, tech support hours wasted and dead end hunches didn't get me anywhere.
Hooray for everyone!
An application shouldn't consume excessive resources.
If an application attempts to consume excessive resources, the OS should not allow that. Appropriate responses might include failing to provide the resource, or terminating the application. A BSOD terminates everything--plainly not the correct response.
Now, considering the .MOV+Toshiba+Vista situation... something in kernel space is plainly wrong. It might be MS code or Toshiba code. We don't know. Something in application space might be wrong too; but it makes sense to fix bugs in code that runs in the kernel first. Then, if the application "hangs" or triggers a more manageable exception (The little popup window that doesn't crash the whole OS, whatever they call that on Vista) then we know that the application had problems too. If that doesn't happen, then the application was innocent all along.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?