Help! Vegas 6b Startup Hangs

randygo wrote on 5/29/2005, 2:08 AM

Against my better judgement I decided to upgrade from Vegas 5 to Vegas 6.

After a number of reboots and downloads to upgrade the .NET services and DirectX 9c, I finally installed Vegas 6b and registered my new serial number.

This is one of the most painful upgrades I have done in some time, but it gets worse.

Now that I have Vegas installed and registered and I attempt to start Vegas, it indicates it is scanning my audio plugins, which completes okay, indicates it is starting the database service, pauses for a while and then pops up "Found New Hardware Wizard".

WTF? I did not install any new hardware. Nor does it indicate what type of device driver it is looking for. I tried scanning the Windows 2000 system disk - nothing found.

I cancel the wizard and the Vegas 6 splash screen is permanently locked on my desktop. I can't even kill the Vegas process with Task Manager!

Nothing short of a reboot can remove the Vegas 6 splash screen.

Arrgh.....

I am extremely frustrated. I don''t expect I will be able to reach Sony support until after the long weekend.

I'm running Windows 2000 SP4 on an ECS K7S5A motherboard with 512MB RAM.

If anyone has any suggestions I would appreciate it.

Thanks,

Randy

Comments

Greg_M wrote on 5/30/2005, 4:44 PM
Randy,

Have you tried uninstalling Vegas 6 through Control Panel and then reinstalling 6b? It took me a couple of installs to get it working.

Greg
randygo wrote on 5/30/2005, 11:04 PM

I tried everything I can think of. I've spent about eight hours on it so far.

As I mentioned on the video forum, I determined it is not totally hanging, it just takes ten minutes to start up after a reboot! After that it starts quickly. It always pops up the "Found New Hardware Wizard" dialogs during the initial ten minute wait, which seems completely bizarre.

I have filed a report with Sony customer support, so hopefully they can diagnose the problem. I would hate for others to experience this.

Randy
ForumAdmin wrote on 5/31/2005, 7:31 AM
What new hardware, if any, gets installed by the new hardware wizard?
randygo wrote on 5/31/2005, 9:44 AM

No hardware gets installed.

When Vegas 6 starts up the first time after a reboot it renders part of the display (I have splash screen turned off now), then a "Found New Hardware Wizard" dialog pops up.
Vegas is spinning at that point and regardless whether I dismiss the dialog or not, Vegas will not finish loading until ten minutes later. During that ten minute wait another hardware found dialog will pop up.

If I look in Device Manager, I see that Vegas has caused two unknown devices to be created.

Does Vegas or some subsystem of Vegas install or expect some software device drivers that cause my system to choke?

As I said, I have never seen a problem like this in the two years I have been running this configuration.

Is there some logging or tracing I can turn on to help debug this?

I tried an strace utility, but there was just too much system call info generated for me to make sense of. I do notice that seems to be spinning rather than hanging during the tem minute wait. I see hundreds of calls to "WaitForMultipleObjects" among others during the wait - could there be some race or deadlock condition occuring that needs to timeout?

Randy
Geoff_Wood wrote on 5/31/2005, 3:53 PM
You could look in My Computer | Management | Event Viewer and look for logged System or Application errors taht may point to the cause of the problem - maybe a previously unsued service missing or misconfigured.

Sounds like somehing sick in your WIndows taht hasn't showed up until now, for whatever reason. I can't imagine how an app could trigger a hardware install.

geoff
randygo wrote on 6/2/2005, 8:49 PM

************* I FOUND IT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! *******************

Well, a bearable workaround at least.

Based on the evidence collected so far, I decided to grep for calls to the Windows API function RegisterDeviceNotification(), which may help point to the code where the hang-up occurs.

There are three objects in Vegas where calls to RegisterDeviceNotification() occur: the Vegas executable itself, the Video Capture executable, and a DLL in the "Video Hardware Drivers" directory named AVCDevices.dll.

Remembering that ForumAdmin suggested earlier that I hide the extviddev.dll file in this directory, I hid the AVCDevices.dll file.

This fixes the problem, now Vegas starts up in seconds after a reboot, no Hardware Found wizards pop up, and no unknown devices are created! I can live with this.

So Sony, what do I lose by removing the AVCDevices.dll?

The Vegas developers may want to scrutinize closely what is happening in this DLL, as I believe there is a race condition or deadlock that occurs under certain configurations.

Thanks for all of the help!

Randy
ReneH wrote on 6/17/2005, 12:24 PM
I'll say this again, I think the majority of "problems" with Vegas is almost always due to user errors. Rarely does Vegas crash. It pays to be a techie when using computers and software, and know your system & hardware settings inside and out. Also, if you are using your system to surf the web your asking for problems, too many trojans, viruses that can screw with your system. Best of luck with your troubleshooting.
TielBr wrote on 7/16/2005, 11:25 PM
Just a tip,... My vegas didn't hang completely, but it did take much longer to start.... Media manager turned off in preferences solved this. If you use Media manager, great,... If not, turn it off. Much quicker start.
randygo wrote on 7/18/2005, 9:58 AM

>Rarely does Vegas crash

I don't think my problem is "user error". I have been a software engineer for over twenty years and have spent a lot of time configuring PCs as well. I wouldn't call the problem I described in this thread as a "crash", but more of a long hangup. Other users have reported "hanging" at the splash screen and other extremely long (greater than three minute) startup times.

This problem has nothing to do with Media Manager, as I had that disabled.

And Vegas 6b does quite often crash on me too. I find when I am in a complex project and then go to open a new complex project it will often crash.

There is still work to be done. I'm hoping Vegas 6c will be much more robust.

Randy