Ultimate-S & Excalibur unresponsive.

Laurence wrote on 7/26/2010, 4:51 AM

Suddenly today, neither Ultimate-S Pro nor Excalibur are responsive. By that I mean that I can call up the script and step through the tabs, but none of the check boxes work. I can't change any of the parameters on either script. I know it isn't the script itself since I have exactly the same problem with both Ultimate-S and Excalibur. Restarting Vegas doesn't help. Neither does rebooting. Any ideas of what would cause this?

This may be related: I can't alt tab through open programs either. This is so frustrating.

Comments

Laurence wrote on 7/26/2010, 5:07 AM

Production Assistant doesn't work either. I just looked and sure enough, Windows 7 just installed a "critical update" this morning. AAHHH!

edit:

I tried to uninstall the critical update with a system restore to yesterday. The system restore failed, but my scripts seem to work again. I have no idea why, but at least I can work this morning.

JohnnyRoy wrote on 7/26/2010, 11:20 AM

> I just looked and sure enough, Windows 7 just installed a "critical update" this morning. AAHHH!

Never, ever, never allow Windows to perform automatic updates. It's an accident waiting to happen. This is one of the first things I turn off after installing a new OS. Glad you got back to a working system.

~jr

Laurence wrote on 7/28/2010, 5:20 PM

You know, Windows updated again and I had the same problem. I system restored back again and script control came back. I now have my automatic updates turned off.

If I were somebody who wrote scripts, it would really bother me that scripts like Ultimate S, Excalibur, Production Assistant, etc simply won't run on an updated version of Windows 7 64bit (and quite possibly other Windows versions as well). Just a heads up in case you script writers want to talk to Microsoft before you start getting the complaints that are sure to come.

Laurence wrote on 7/30/2010, 9:24 AM

Problem kept coming back with each reboot. Did a Windows startup files repair with the Windows 7 disk and now it seems to be fixed (hopefully).

Laurence wrote on 7/31/2010, 12:16 PM

Next day the problem came back. There seem to be two related problems. One is scripts that are viewed as extensions are unresponsive. The second is that whenever this happens, I also can't alt tab between open program windows. Somehow these to issues are related.

JohnnyRoy wrote on 7/31/2010, 2:57 PM

I haven't installed any Windows 7 updates since 6/26/10 and there are only 4 waiting. Two are security updates, one is an email filter update and the other is the malicious software removal update. Here they are:

Security Update for Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 (KB980373)
Security Update for Windows 7 for x64-based Systems (KB2032276)
Update for Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 Junk Email Filter (KB2202122)
Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool x64 - July 2010 (KB890830)

I can't afford to update now because I'm in the middle of a big project so I can't test this out right now. I usually only update between projects and only after a full backup has been taken. You should try and figure out which update is causing it the problem by applying them one at a time and testing between each one.

~jr

Laurence wrote on 7/31/2010, 8:00 PM

I think I have it figured out. I installed Pro Tools not so long ago and there was a startup program called "TaskBarIconApplet" which is an Avid program that must have installed with Pro Tools. Since I was also having trouble with taskbar switching I unchecked this from my startup options. Crossing my fingers but now I can alt tab properly and the extensions scripts seem to work again. Pro Tools seems to work fine as well.

Edit: well it's not "TaskBarIconApplet" after all. The problem came up again today and that program is still disabled from my startup options. This is driving me absolutely nuts! Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, and any repair I try seems to fix the problem, but only temporarily. I can find posts all over of people having the same "alt-tab" problem (if they were running Vegas and scripts I'm sure they'd have that problem too), but no solutions, only requests for help.

Laurence wrote on 8/1/2010, 9:26 AM

Two other things that I can't do when this problem is active:

1/ drag clips from desktop to Vegas timeline.
2/ select open programs consistently from icons at the bottom of the screen.

Edit: also, scripts from Internet pages won't run either when I have this problem.

What kind of scripting do Ultimate S, Excalibur and Production Assistant use? Is there some base scripting program I can uninstall and reinstal? Maybe that might fix my problem.

JohnnyRoy wrote on 8/1/2010, 10:33 AM

> What kind of scripting do Ultimate S, Excalibur and Production Assistant use? Is there some base scripting program I can uninstall and reinstal? Maybe that might fix my problem.

They are all written in C# and are using the .Net Framework. The problem is, .Net is a moving target. Vegas 6 uses .Net 1.1, Vegas 7 uses 2.0, Vegas Pro 8 uses 3.0 and Vegas Pro 9 uses and 3.5. You could try re-installing the .Net Framework for your version of Vegas but it's really odd that scripts from internet pages don't run either. (I assume you just mean JavaScript in your browser)

~jr

amendegw wrote on 8/1/2010, 1:53 PM

"Never, ever, never allow Windows to perform automatic updates. It's an accident waiting to happen. This is one of the first things I turn off after installing a new OS. Glad you got back to a working system."I don't want to start a religious war here, but you pays your money and takes your choice to turn off automatic updates. The Conficker "worm" is now (and remains) on several million workstations because they had automatic updates turned off.

...Jerry

Edit: For anyone who is interested, the following is a very interesting read about the Conficker "worm": http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/06/the-enemy-within/8098/

Here's the quote pertient to this discussion:

"On October 23, 2008, the company issued a rare “critical security bulletin” (MS08-067)...

JohnnyRoy wrote on 8/2/2010, 5:47 AM

> I don't want to start a religious war here, but you pays your money and takes your choice to turn off automatic updates. The Conficker "worm" is now (and remains) on several million workstations because they had automatic updates turned off.

I was not implying that you never update your computer. Just that you update it at a time chosen by you when it will least impact you and when you have a backup just in case it fails. Microsoft is a far greater threat than any virus as they have a long track record of breaking their own OS with their buggy updates. I have been victim of this just before a big deadline and I will never allow them to update one of my production PC's without my say so.

BTW, big corporations do not allow automatic updates. They test each update themselves and roll out updates to their employees only after they confirm that it doesn't break anything. You should be as diligent with your production systems as well.

~jr