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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've managed to misspell the name of your own laptop.
What you are seeing lies at the bullseye of the primary reason why I don't intend to ever install Vista. I don't know that the problem stems from this, but this problem has digital rights management (DRM) written all over it. Windows devices are supposed to degrade (by Microsoft specification that Toshiba has surely designed to) when they detect allegedly (by some measure) "illegal" content (e.g. content that should be DRM protected and isn't). Who knows what difficult interactions are built into the "decision" (made by the operating system and enforced in hardware) to give you a blue screen when you play your locally stored MOV files in Quicktime, but the problem is almost certainly in Vista's DRM code rather than Quicktime.
The best solution, I would guess, is to replace your Vista installation with something that isn't designed to fail. XP is a reasonable solution if you can get it. Ubuntu Linux is probably the next best option.
If you do replace Vista, be sure to go back to Toshiba and ask for a refund on the operating system.
This has been discussed on Slashdot before. It may be worthwhile to find and read older related articles.
Davis http://davis.foulger.net
It's marked "Offtopic" because the quality of moderation has gone to shit. Don't lose sleep over it.
Since Vista's release in fact. I have tried it with both onboard sound and Audigy 2 ZS
Symptoms:
Quicktime will not play local files with 5.1 sound. Causes BSOD or slowdown and no sound emitting from Movie file.
When Vista was first released Quicktime would not work at all unless you have Quicktime Alternative on. It even destroyed RAID arrays. Apple quickly released the 7.5 version that fixed that. However 5.1 sound still does not work even with AC97 Audio, which quite frankly is crap especailly 3 months down the line. All other media players work fine (Cyberlink PowerDVD, Media PLayer 11, Winamp, etc) all with Multi-speaker setup.
As such Quicktime is not even installed until they (Apple) sort this crap out, which will porbably be months away yet. The 5.1 sound was woefully broken in XP with Audigy for months before they fixed it whean Quicktime 7.x was first released with that feature, and I dont see it being any different here. Anyone saying its the OS's faul are just the usual bunch who want to diss on Vista without actually TRYING it for any length of time. Vitsa for me works fine, except the few "minor" apps like Quicktime, and until the venders sort out thier prodcuts it isnt going to change.