Sonic Stage 4.3 not 'seeing' minidisc

[silentsound]

Hello All.

I recently upgraded SonicStage from 4.2 to 4.3.

All WAS well with 4.2, and I could transfer everything reasonably easily.

The problem is now SonicStage does not seem to connect at all to my Sony RH-10 or NH700 Hi-MD recorders.

I'm running on Windows XP, latest updates etc.

The installation was 'murder'. It took a few tries to get to a successful installation.

My PC can see the minidisc as a drive but when I run Sonicstage the software just doesn't see it at all.

The minidisc also appears in the Control Panel/Hardware list.

I have scoured the forums looking for clues and have uninstalled/re-installed Sonicstage and OpenMG multiple times with no success.

I downloaded and ran the Windows Install Clean-Up utility.

I also did two system restores and installed Sonicstage 3.0 from CD to try to get the damn thing to work!

Has anyone else suffered a similar fate?

If anyone has any ideas what Sonicstage has done to my PC I would be very grateful.

Kenny

[Avrin]

1. Disconnect any ATRAC devices from your PC and close SonicStage.

2. Go to Control Panel->System->Advanced->Environment Variables.

3. Under the "User variables for [your username]" field, press the New... button, and create the variable (exactly as shown, without quotation marks): "devmgr_show_details", set it equal to 1, press OK, press the New... button again, then create the "devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices" variable, and also set it equal to 1 and press OK. Press OK again to save the variables and exit the window.

4. Go to Device Manager, and enable the View->Show hidden devices option.

5. Find and remove all "phantom" (semi-transparent) instances of "Net MD", "Sony USB Device" (in Universal Serial Bus controllers), "SONY Hi-MD WALKMAN USB Device" (in Disk drives), and "Generic volume" (in Storage volumes). Do not remove any Generic volumes which are not semi-transparent - these are your hard drives!!!

6. Go to C:\WINNT\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS (or C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS under Windows XP), and manually delete the following files (be very careful in that folder!!!): NETMD031.sys, NETMD033.sys. NETMD052.sys, NETMDUSB.sys, SonyMSDK.sys, SonySDK2.sys, and SonyUSBF.sys.

7. Restart your computer.

8. Download the stable SS42 driver package: http://dl1.aii.co.jp/contents/connect/_dat...r/pa_driver.zip , unzip it, and run Setup.exe. Restart the computer again, if prompted.

8. Plug the unit in again. Remember to always plug in the older unit first. And avoid plugging two units simultaneously.

And go back to SS42 as soon as you can.

Edited February 25, 2007 by Avrin

[silentsound]

Many thanks for taking the time to reply.

After a couple of tries, following your advice, it's finally working again.

I had to install Sonicstage 4.3 as I don't have a complete setup file for 4.2, so I hope it'll be okay for now.

I can only hope that Sony will take some time before releasing the next upgrade.!

Kenny

[Avrin]

Well, SS42 is still available from SONY servers. Just go to the SS43 download page in this forum ( http://forums.minidisc.org/index.php?showtopic=9586 ), choose the version you want, right-click on its link, and choose Copy Shortcut. Then paste the shortcut into your browser's Address bar (do not press Enter at this moment), replace ss43_01_14050 with ss42_02_11020, and finally press Enter. You'll get the web installer for the previous (precious?) version. Or send me a personal message (specifying the required region) if you want a complete installation package (I don't have it, but I know where SONY hides it).

But you must uninstall SS43 completely, and clean the PC before installing the older version. The library structure does not seem to be changed between 42 and 43, so this is not a concern, though I still recommend backing it up.

Edited February 26, 2007 by Avrin

[Ishiyoshi]

Thanks for the troubleshooting tips, Avrin. I've incorporated your tips within our Hi-MD/NetMD SonicStage Software FAQ. Many thanks from the community.

[Avrin]

You're welcome!