convergent
11-22-2006, 05:20 PM
I'm on a major life tangent to build a media streaming setup in my house. It all started when I bought an Infrant ReadyNAS NV+ to store all my image libraries. But the ReadyNAS has a lot of streaming capability, and looking through forums to get things setup, the geek in me popped out. That is a whole other story that I'll probably chronicle here when I'm done... but along the path I made the mistake of installing the WinDVD8 trial. Actually I inadvertantly installed another Intervideo product first... I thought it was a media player, but it was instead a media server which I don't need.
So I installed WinDVD, but actually never used it. It took forever to install, and I was imagining that it was wrapping itself into the bowels of my system. I decided to remove it a couple days after installing. I had made some changes to my network drives, but all letters were still the same so no problem should have come from there. When I tried to remove it from the Control Panel Add/Remove Programs, it promptly got an error. The error mentioned an invalid drive letter... however the letter it said was bad was not. The drive had been replaced, but was a mirror of the original. It made no sense.
I then tried reinstalling it thinking that would fix the problem. Not so... it got the same error. So, I called Intervideo support. I was getting the idea they wouldn't be help when the goofy phone tree took so long to reach a person... and the website is fairly illusive about how to reach them. When I talked to a person, I explained my person and was told that they don't offer support for trial versions. ;) OK, I would think that trial customers would be ones you'd want to treat well.... if you cared if they bought the product. After some prodding, he "asked around" and came back with the brainstorm that I try using System Restore. Ordinarilly this wouldn't have been a bad idea, but I had installed and changed a bunch of crap on my system after I installed this trial. I really didn't want to redo all of that stuff.
So, time to get out the big gun... RegEdit. I spent a half hour deleting keys. This thing was ALL over the place. Some of the keys had to be modified as they were things that it took over, that needed to be moved back to my other DVD running programs. About half way through doing it, something popped up and tried to start reinstalling it.... NEVER seen that before. It was like a virus or something.... it knew I was trying to kill it and was trying to stop me.
I think I got it all out, and I can run DVDs and all is good. My problem is that some rogue process keeps triggering something that tries to run InstallShield again. Hopefully I can track it down, as I really don't want to roll back with System Restore.
Advice... stay was from WinDVD.
So I installed WinDVD, but actually never used it. It took forever to install, and I was imagining that it was wrapping itself into the bowels of my system. I decided to remove it a couple days after installing. I had made some changes to my network drives, but all letters were still the same so no problem should have come from there. When I tried to remove it from the Control Panel Add/Remove Programs, it promptly got an error. The error mentioned an invalid drive letter... however the letter it said was bad was not. The drive had been replaced, but was a mirror of the original. It made no sense.
I then tried reinstalling it thinking that would fix the problem. Not so... it got the same error. So, I called Intervideo support. I was getting the idea they wouldn't be help when the goofy phone tree took so long to reach a person... and the website is fairly illusive about how to reach them. When I talked to a person, I explained my person and was told that they don't offer support for trial versions. ;) OK, I would think that trial customers would be ones you'd want to treat well.... if you cared if they bought the product. After some prodding, he "asked around" and came back with the brainstorm that I try using System Restore. Ordinarilly this wouldn't have been a bad idea, but I had installed and changed a bunch of crap on my system after I installed this trial. I really didn't want to redo all of that stuff.
So, time to get out the big gun... RegEdit. I spent a half hour deleting keys. This thing was ALL over the place. Some of the keys had to be modified as they were things that it took over, that needed to be moved back to my other DVD running programs. About half way through doing it, something popped up and tried to start reinstalling it.... NEVER seen that before. It was like a virus or something.... it knew I was trying to kill it and was trying to stop me.
I think I got it all out, and I can run DVDs and all is good. My problem is that some rogue process keeps triggering something that tries to run InstallShield again. Hopefully I can track it down, as I really don't want to roll back with System Restore.
Advice... stay was from WinDVD.