SonicStage 4.3 (Vista) Won't Upload from Hi-MD to PC

[belletristik]

For reasons I won't get into here, I am in the unenviable position of being a Vista user, with no other OS options currently available to me. It's a new machine upon which I have installed SonicStage 4.3, as well as the vista drivers from Sony. SonicStage installed without any problems or errors, and works fine for playback and transferring from PC to MD. However, I can't get it to upload anything from a Hi-MD formatted disc to my PC.

When I try to do this, the little status area in the upper right corner of the SonicStage window appears, with the message 'preparing to transfer', and then 'loading' while the green progess bar goes all the way across from 0% to 100%. All of this happens within less than one second, and then the status area disappears, the content of the transfer pane (Hi-MD (E:)) is refreshed (without any changes), but no transfer has taken place. The time elapsed from when I click the transfer arrow to the end of the process described above is about one second. Then nothing happens. There is not even an error message and SonicStage doesn't freeze or crash or anything. It just goes back to being idle. It's as if it thinks that the transfer has actually taken place.

Meanwhile, the Hi-MD unit itself sits idle throughout. At no point is the disc actually accessed, and no error message appears on its screen. I've tried this with both the RH10 and the DH10P, and always get the same result. Similarly, I have tried this on several discs and with all manner of ATRAC and mp3 files, including downloaded podcasts, files that originate from Simple Burner and others that have been recorded via line and optical inputs on various units. I simply can't get an upload to take place. By the way, in case you were wondering, no the discs are not write protected. I can however upload various data from Hi-MD to PC in Windows Explorer, so it's not a physical problem with the USB cable or port or anything.

The only thing that I can think of is that I am still missing drivers somewhere. I've downloaded and run the PA_Driver.exe driver update from Sony, and as far as I can tell the only *.sys files that have been added (to C:\Program Files\Sony\Personal Audio Driver as well as C:\Windows\System32\drivers) are:

NETMD031.sys

NETMD033.sys

NETMD052.sys

NETMDUSB.sys

Shouldn't there also be some HIMD*.sys files as well?

If anyone has a fully-functional SonicStage install running under Vista (does such a thing even exist?), I would appreciate if you could let me know if you have any HIMD*.sys files on your system, and where they are located. Similarly, if anyone has experienced this problem or has any ideas of how it could be solved, I'd love to hear from you.

Thanks!