sfbp

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I think you have to get it disassembled and find the microswitch. It (or the metal which triggers it on closing) probably got bent when someone prised the unit open. If you are not good with tiny screws and the like, most likely a competent service engineer can fix this. But it may cost you as much as you've already spent with no guarantee of success. It's S893 in the manual, I have a feeling it's at the corner under the Walkman symbol located on the lid of the unit.

This thread on another forum makes the point that 24-bit A->D is way more important than eventual (gross) data rate. There's nothing mystical about 14.4kbps/44Khz-FS/16bits. The thread essentially suggests that to the ear much lower data rates and higher bit depth will do more towards "real fidelity" (my quotation marks), than increasing the sample rate or sticking blindly to "uncompressed" audio. There are many 292kbps (or less) MD recordings that sound better than CD, and R.Daneel explains why.

So far all expected behaviour, as the NetMD driver is not used by HiMD disks. Period. You have to switch in the NetMD driver you downloaded from this site for the one that came with SonicStage Ultimate 4.3 The way to do this is 1. delete (uninstall) current driver, which may well be showing an exclamation point. Good to clean up any OTHER drivers that got installed for NetMD following the instructions in THIS POST Then point the Windows hardware installer at the file NETMD760.INF which presumably is in the same directory as the other files you got from that zip file. OR... 2. UPDATE the driver for the NetMD already showing. Note: SonyMSUS.inf is for Memory Stick (MS) - no relevance to what you are doing methinks. Hopefully this gets you there. Stephen

Sony protected the CD's because they have investment in the CD industry. Simple as that. They tried to make it possible for you to do stuff with your own recordings. Apple did the same, for a slightly different reason. The difference was not DRM but marketing. Would appreciate the test of NetMD760 on XP/64 if that is something you can do at work. Thanks.

I see, finally. The 64-bit XP is not running on the bare metal. In this case I have no idea if the hosted XP or VMWare has the right hooks to ensure a driver install will work. It (Sonic Stage) works in XP32, Vista/32, Vista/64, W7/64, W7/32 and I can think of no reason why it should not work on XP/64. After all the Windows philosophy is "embrace and extende". So I don't think much actually changed in there (though I can imagine some of the tweaks to get compatibility).

I'm not understanding something. This driver (NETMD760.*) is for Native Windows64. What's all this about 64-bit VM? Generally, isn't the 64 bit the native machine that 32-bit OS's may be hosted under? (I hear those thunks marching louder and louder like something in a Monty Python song, "Thunk Thunk Thunk Thunk, Thunk Thunk Thunk Thunk.....") Stephen

No (to noticing this), but I am sure there is a door-detecting microswitch. It may be as simple as fixing it.

I really don't know what's wrong - as I say SS runs fine for me and many others here. Glad you found an alternative. Just out of curiosity, does JSymphonic do ATRAC or does everything get converted to MP3? The diehards like myself will probably never accept anything except real ATRAC.

If I was trying to put MD "into a computer" I might start with a Car deck. But that won't get me HiMD, sadly.

Sure but at some point you may be asked (imagine perhaps the install fails or something) to "rerun with recommended settings". What this will most likely do is to set the application to run in XP SP2 or SP3 compability mode. However you can certainly do this after the fact.

... in addition, you cannot UPload from the disk (at least HiMD)

Are you sure? I was under the impression that in service mode the units will ignore WP. Something to try

Just as you describe, but without the MD plugged in, install SonicStage first. THEN insert the MD with an SP or MDLP disk in it, and navigate to that driver (NetMD760.INF) installation file. If you did it already, you may have a yellow exclamation mark and/or an "unknown" device, which you have to update... the world of USB drivers is a bit uncertain, sorry.

1. Forget about NetMD... you have a Network Walkman, nothing to do with Minidisc as far as I know. Sorry for any confusion. 2. Use Native W7-64, and you should be fine. "XP Box" is my shorthand for the XP Virtual machine. I am probably mixing you up with one of the other lucky contestants who is fighting (or about to fight) SonicStage. Since you say Home Premium, there IS no XP compatibility VM, that only comes with Professional or better. My goof. This error you see means you are probably almost flying. But clean off as much as possible and try one more time from the top. You WILL have to tell Windows to install it "as if" you had XP (you may well get a choice of SP2 or SP3, I have no idea which to choose). Since you claim it worked fine initially, I can only imagine somehow one of the AutoUpdates has shot you in the foot. I cannot be sure of this, however. I know that Sonic Stage does work on W7-64, I have installed it myself. I don't have a Network Walkman (that works with SS) however.

Which version of SonicStage 4.3? (oops you loaded 4.0, that is almost certainly too old for this setup) You need the one from this site. Also you probably need to uninstall OpenMG, though I have a feeling it will get updated just fine. The other thing is, don't try plugging in your Walkman at all just yet. (yes, I think you're getting close)

the whole thing (it's called a Hive, not a folder, for future reference) Good luck!

You may have stumbled upon why we are having trouble in other areas. Don't touch the stuff you found in HKCU. Somehow Sony has hardcoded some registry entries. You have to look in HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\Sony Corporation\SonicStage\EMD The key (not value) you need to delete is HomeURL

The part which intrigues me is the statement in your first post, where you said it transferred a few files then stopped. At present, you (and I) cannot get the dratted thing to start. But it seems you did.... any ideas how and why?

If you've never used Regedit, this would be a good time to take a step back and do some reading about the Windows Registry. You can easily cause complete chaos. The good news is that Windows backs it up automatically quite often (Restore Points) and you can read about System Restore with respect to those, too. I really cannot advise you to start playing around with it based on what you have told us you know. However, perhaps you can find some friendly local person who is moderately comfortable with managing things like this, and will guide you through what is needed. All the best Stephen

Try here for starters:

Sounds fine. I would still very much like to know if the drivers here work for Windows XP64. This may in time be quite helpful to others. Thanks

OK. I did some tests, I have a 64-bit Windows 7 machine to which I canNOT connect a MD player but no matter. 1. To get simple burner to run, I had to turn off User Account Control (completely). 2. When I double click the icon on the desktop, the Service starts up but I get no UI (the red rectangle similar to the blue startup rectangle for SonicStage). I can see the Service running. 3. I mucked about with what account the program logs on as. Still no luck, tried the user account (an administrator) as the service's account. This seemed to use more memory but otherwise no change. 4. To UNinstall MD simple burner, I had to stop the MD Simple Burner Service first, otherwise the uninstaller crashed and suggested an unneeded reboot. So you and I are in the same place, something prevents SB from running, probably some nasty trick pulled by the authors of the program for DRM reasons would be my guess. OpenMG has lots of nasty tricks in it. Stephen

Aha! So starting it works.... that's good. What does the shortcut (for SB) you got on your desktop say? Mine says "C:\Program Files\Sony\MD Simple Burner\NetMDSB.exe -classic" I note that if I double click the file without that "-classic" parameter, nothing happens. And another question: is the Compatibility mode set on that shortcut, to XP? Last question (for now): when you say it crashes, what do you see when the actual program is started?

Is the service running? Or did it already crash, I'm not clear from your description.