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?"

Comments

I think you answered your question already.

[HowIsMyDriving?]

In your question you stated that the Toshiba laptop runs custom tablet software. If all other configurations of Vista, the Intel Chipset, Quicktime, and other variables work fine, you have just eliminated them as possibilities but the Tablet software. More than likely there is some call within the tablet software doing with the display that interacts when a Mov. is trying to be played locally, which causes conflict. Also, why is this Slashdot worthy?

Re:I think you answered your question already.

[Malc]

I've heard that BS before, from the Mozilla devs. That was a couple of years before the they admitted to a huge resource leak with images that caused some computers to BSOD. Perhaps you want to blame the graphics driver... but Mozilla was the only app that triggered it. They claimed it was impossible for an application to cause a BSOD so there couldn't be anything wrong with Mozilla. Turns out they were wrong and their pig-headedness meant a massive bug sat their for years.

No shock - Vista's #1 goal is DRM. Not usability.

[gsfprez]

I installed Vista on my MacPro - in 12 minutes, i had a successfully BSOD'd Vista by playing a standard DiVX 6.0 file on Vista. (yesssss... i installed the drivers for everything)

I think (i do not know - so back off, i'm guessing) that there is some kind of problem with Vista and video... at least, i'm seeing a trend.

Considering the amount of work Microsoft put into preventing people from playing (assumedly pirated) video, I don't think its much of a strech to believe that its much harder for developers to make video playback software. I know that i read a very long article that talked about video card compliance and every 30ms being polled by the OS or some such bullshit, but i don't recall the link. But it was quite long, very extensive, and seemed to me that Vista's goal was not to provide a system which would foster video content creation - but rather, just the opposite.

its rather sad, actually. Microsoft/Adobe and MS/AVID had the makings of at least pitiful competition for Apple/Apple & Apple/Avid... (Apple/Adobe? Yeah, not so much any more after NAB). I actually LIKE competition, because it means that Apple and their developers actually have to work to make better products.

With all of the pain that's obivously involved with working HD video (which inclueds VIEWING IT) on Vista, there won't be much competition. If Vista is a shitty at video work as its looking to be, i suspect that Apple will be able to kick back on the beach with a mai-tai and not have to evern try... i mean, HD playback is 100% zero effort (assuming you aren't trying to do it on a PowerBook 520c) in Mac OS X - there's no DRM invovled whatsoever (except for BR and HDDVDs).... and the video cards Just Work(TM), and Quicktime just works, and VLC just works and DIVX just works.... etc.

sucks to have your workflow based upon a product that is EOL in 7 months (Windows XP + ___________). Personally, i don't care. I've long stopped caring about the abuse people that use Windows for video work put themselves thru... sure, Windows did some things faster back in the day, but all of that is totally gone now, isn't it?

Now, its all about the OS.

Re:No shock - Vista's #1 goal is DRM. Not usabilit

[robbiethefett]

i have a small home-based audio recording studio, and i'm becoming more involved in the whole computer music scene. from what i gather, quite a large number of studios have decided to switch entirely to Mac for production environments. i guess vista stepped on so many toes that a lot of shops that run XP have been migrating to Macs and plan to be exclusively apple shops, even before XP's end of life. for some reason, professionals seem to be pissed off that MS wants to control what they do with their own data.. can't imagine why.

All of our work machines have this problem...

[robson]

...and we run Windows XP, not Vista.

Any attempt to watch a Quicktime file from a local drive results in problems (usually an instant bluescreen, but sometimes general breakage -- taskbar not responding, apps not closing when ordered, menus not responding, that sort of thing).

Viewing a movie that exists elsewhere on the network is fine. Viewing a movie from the Internet still breaks things, presumably because it's still getting cached to the local drive.

They're not brand-name computers, but they were all put together by the same place, presumably with similar specs. Nobody's dug into it too deeply, we've just gotten used to moving all *.mov files to a network drive before viewing. :)

oh i beg to differ..

[plasmacutter]

Apple software for Windows has always sucked rocks

back in the day (circa 2002) i was working with a cruddy old machine and wanted to watch some divx on it.. but wmp kept stuttering.. so i installed quicktime and used it.. it used 20% less resources and its dependability was the first of many factors which got me to switch to mac.

that said, quicktime 7 was a major step down from 6.x because they broke the caching (making it stutter even on osX), but that has nothing to do with the platform it runs on.

Reminds me of Toshiba + Symantec products..

[csirac]

Running PcAnywhere on your XP laptop that happens to be a Toshiba, and apparently in combination with a Symantec AV product (NAV IIRC) would result in a guranteed blue screen on every shutdown.

Had never seen that before with this software combination on any laptop except some Toshibas at work back in the day.

Nearest KB article I could find on Symantec was 2003112516321112, but it's only available via Google cache at http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:FBy7QXRHzIIJ:s ervice1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/pca.nsf/1ab3f998698d6 46f88256f48005b9e71/b998f8fb40c5dc3988256dea000204 6d%3FOpenDocument+site:symantec.com+toshiba+shutdo wn+pcanywhere&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=au&client=fire fox-a

Caused by SATA drivers?

[yakumo.unr]

I had this exact same problem a couple of years ago, it was caused by bad (terrible) drivers for the Adaptec SATA card I had (1210sa, using Sil 3112 chipset).

Moving the mov file to any drive not using that controller and it played perfectly.
From the 1210sa, an instant unrecoverable lock would occur. maybe 5% of mov's I tried wouldn't lock the drive, but those that did it was a definite and 100% repeatable problem, irrespective of player used, or quicktime version.

I reported it to Adaptec several times, as it was fixed and then broken again with different releases, but never acknowledged.

Changed to a Promise controller instead.