problems w/ video factory

gloria wrote on 8/28/2002, 11:52 PM
I purchased this software and installed it on my computr. I have a compaq w/80 gigs of hard drive and 512 megs of ram. I closed all other programs and made a small slideshow about 10 minutes long that included a little music. Towards the end of the slideshow I noticed my computer kinda of dragging then my computer froze up. After that I started having problems with my computer. First i would be working in a totaly different application and then my computer would freeze or my keyboard would stop working. I would try to restart my computer by pressing control alt delete but that didnt work.. so I would have to shut my computer down manually. It kept doing that so then I removed video factory from my computer and restored my computer to a day before I had installed this software. I then got an error message something about a driver. I called tech support but received none. I then called compaq and had to take my computer in. A few days later I get a call and the people at Compusa tell me that my computer needs a new motherboard and processor because this program messed up my computer.
Has this happened to anyone else?
thanks
Gloria

Comments

miketree wrote on 8/29/2002, 5:44 AM
Gloria, What you were told sounds like bullshit to me.

It should be impossible for running a program on your PC to damage the motherboard. I suspect that this was a coincidence. Your PC would have died anyway regardless of running VF.

laz111 wrote on 8/29/2002, 5:51 AM
gloria, this is not a known problem. In fact I've never heard of this before. It's verrrry unlikely a piece of software like vf could have the ability to fry a mobo. Tech depts like to blame everyone but their own company. Usually their solution to all compatibility problems is to format the hd, thus losing all stored info in the process. The real problem could be any number of reasons. It sounds like the settings for the os were set to overclock and this fried the mobo. If you're not put off too much and want to stay with this great piece of software we'll help if you need it.
Grazie wrote on 8/29/2002, 6:21 AM
OOoooh that's a new one! S/W frying MoBos! - If that's the case I would be openning up a Fish 'n Chip shoppe. I really hate it when Newbies - and I - are caught out, if in fact this was the case.

Gloria, if you do stay with VF, the results to be won with this ginormous package are remarkable - I don't work for VF/Sonic Foundry either.

Keep us informed,

G
gloria wrote on 8/29/2002, 8:58 AM
Well when they told me that my mother board was mesed up I kind of had my doubts. I did take a course in college and I just cant see how a software package could mess up the moherboard and processor. When I took muy computr in it was still working. Its not like it just died and wouldnt come on. I asked the tech this and he said that all the information goes from the motherboard to the processor and so all of the stuff it was trying to process is what messed up my computer.
I did find this package to my liking except for when my computer started acting groggy then I got kinda scared. Needless to say I removed it from my computer.
Thanks
Gloria
IanG wrote on 8/29/2002, 11:02 AM
Gloria, if you've got any choice in the matter, get someone else to fix your PC - that's nonsense!

Cheers

Ian G.
Simmer wrote on 8/29/2002, 1:59 PM
Ok, I'll put in my 2-cents. :-)

I'm afraid that the folks you talked to, Gloria, are a bit confused.
I'm a software engineer by trade and I have yet to learn how I can hose hardware with software without some sort of software accessable register on the card that has the capability of frying hardware.
I'm really not aware of any register known as the "fry-my-hardware" register on a PC.

More likely is the fact that one of the following occured:
1) Some hardware configuration on the PC itself was JUST out of tolerance threshhold.
2) Some PCI card (or similar device) was not seated properly. I'm not sure though that this would fry other hardware since I've accidently done this before myself with no popping/smoking parts. It seems that the PC would just act flaky or stop running altogether until the card was re-seated. But I guess its theoretically possible. Hmmmm.
3) A previous power surge occured (do you have a surge protector) which left the PC limping and it just happened to croak when running VF.

Anyway, don't be disheartened about VF. I've had tons of great success with it and
would recomend it to anyone.

See yu

-Mike
miketree wrote on 8/30/2002, 2:52 AM
Mike - It's a bit off topic, but I've had smoke out of a computer by badly seated memory. I've never moved so quick in my life! (It wasn't actually me that put the chip in, though! It was a work-mate).