A solution to the "slow SP upload" problem on the RH1

[Avrin]

Recently, several members of the Russian http://www.player.ru/talk/ forum (including myself) discovered that their RH1s take ages to upload SP. A full SP disc took 50-100 minutes to upload. Yesterday, a member named fsw discovered that this occurs after plugging in an older NetMD unit to the computer you are using for RH1 uploads, and found out that removing all NetMD drivers and plugging the RH1 in again solves the problem. I'll expand on this a bit more.

The problem seems to be caused by some conflict between the driver for the "fast" RH1 (NETMD052.sys), and drivers for older "slow" models (NETMDUSB.sys, NETMD031.sys, and NETMD033.sys), which are designed for NetMD downloading only. If you plug in an older unit, it installs its driver, which then doesn't allow the RH1 to upload at full speed.

The complete solution is the first five steps of the solution to the "Walkman device detection issue", which I posted before. I'll repeat the five steps here, with an update to Step 1, which is absolutely essential:

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

Then plug in your RH1 with an SP disc inside, it will install its driver, and upload at full speed again. And avoid plugging in older units to the same computer again. Edited June 30, 2008 by Avrin

[sfbp]

Recently, several members of the Russian http://www.player.ru/talk/ forum (including myself) discovered that their RH1s take ages to upload SP. A full SP disc took 50-100 minutes to upload. Yesterday, a member named fsw discovered that this occurs after plugging in an older NetMD unit to the computer you are using for RH1 uploads, and found out that removing all NetMD drivers and plugging the RH1 in again solves the problem. I'll expand on this a bit more.

The problem seems to be caused by some conflict between the driver for the "fast" RH1 (NETMD052.sys), and drivers for older "slow" models (NETMDUSB.sys, NETMD031.sys, and NETMD033.sys), which are designed for NetMD downloading only. If you plug in an older unit, it installs its driver, which then doesn't allow the RH1 to upload at full speed.

The complete solution is the first five steps of the solution to the "Walkman device detection issue", which I posted before. I'll repeat the five steps here:

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!!!

Then plug in your RH1 with an SP disc inside, it will install its driver, and upload at full speed again. And avoid plugging in older units to the same computer again.

Totally amazing! Well done indeed.

I have (as I hinted in some other post) for years gone through and attempted to clean up the Windows device map when things got horrible, by hand, using REGEDIT. Whatamess! This finally gives a way to do it properly. as well as solving the bizarre problem of the uploader (RH1) that wouldn't upload per specifications (on speed, that is).

A tip for the less-experienced at all this sort of stuff:

Make sure you reboot AFTER deleting whatever devices you decide to zap. The registry isn't really flushed properly until you do so. It's the act of shutting down that makes things really permanent,

Well I just did an upload at about x10, very impressive.

Then I went and put in a HiMD disk to the same unit, and uploaded something from it. No problems. Finally I switched back to NetMD mode and uploaded something just to make sure the fix hadn't gone away.

All worked perfectly.

What I should like very much to know, is can someone come up with a cute way to allow the other devices to work without this problem. I have several different portables, and I don't really want to wear out my RH1 just to put music on to them. Can you perhaps give specifics of which drivers cause this stuff to happen?

Thank you very much!!!!

[Avrin]

Can you perhaps give specifics of which drivers cause this stuff to happen?

Looks like any of the "old" drivers can cause this. All my older devices are first and second generation HiMD units, which are using the NETMD033.SYS driver, which does cause this problem. And fsw actually plugged in the MDS-JE780 deck, which uses an older driver, which also caused this problem.

If you don't want to wear out your RH1, you may use older units to download music. Just remove their drivers when you need to upload SP.

[sfbp]

 

Avrin said:

Looks like any of the "old" drivers can cause this. All my older devices are first and second generation HiMD units, which are using the NETMD033.SYS driver, which does cause this problem. And fsw actually plugged in the MDS-JE780 deck, which uses an older driver, which also caused this problem.

 

If you don't want to wear out your RH1, you may use older units to download music. Just remove their drivers when you need to upload SP.

Perhaps would it work to do some renaming, if some newer drivers will actually work the old units?

 

Just a thought.

(added years later): there is NOW a set of driver files in our downloads section which solves the problem for ever, and it is possible to use the 052 driver for ALL units with the updated .INF file. This was totally avoided for 64-bit because the ONLY driver we ever had for 64 bits had to be adapted to work with all the earlier units. Going back and doing the same mods to let the 052 driver install for all units meant that the problem raised by this thread no longer happens to begin with whenever a non-RH1 unit is plugged in.

Note that the modified driver set is not signed by Sony (nothing we can do about that) and so each time the driver installs it will be necessary to override the warnings from Microsoft about unsigned drivers. In recent versions of Windows that warning has become more and more difficult to get around but it is still possible. Once the driver has been installed, you don't need to leave the machine in a state which accepts unsigned drivers - i.e. it is necessary to perform this decrease in security only temporarily. Note that the driver ITSELF is unchanged from Sony's version, hence the requirement to have the lowered security at install time only.

Edited November 19, 2015 by sfbp
Help to newbies to realise this is now solved.

[Avrin]

The new driver (NETMD052.SYS) is for the RH1 only, and is not specifically designed for older units, so renaming may cause other compatibility problems.

[THIS SUCKS]

i have a great idea! we need someone to make the whole process automates of removing the slower drivers with the push of a button! then we could just push the button and the driver could be removed and the pc could reboot itself. then you could do your sp upload then not have to worry if you pugged in an old device for downloads only. this could be done anytime it was needed

[sfbp]

The new driver (NETMD052.SYS) is for the RH1 only, and is not specifically designed for older units, so renaming may cause other compatibility problems.

So this driver is exactly where to look for the hooks 1kyle and I seem to have some project to investigate. Unless you and your team of experts are able.....?

[sfbp]

i have a great idea! we need someone to make the whole process automates of removing the slower drivers with the push of a button! then we could just push the button and the driver could be removed and the pc could reboot itself. then you could do your sp upload then not have to worry if you pugged in an old device for downloads only. this could be done anytime it was needed

Maybe simply renaming the driver files with a batch file (it hardly needs a program to be written) would work nicely?

[Avrin]

So this driver is exactly where to look for the hooks 1kyle and I seem to have some project to investigate.

I sincerely hope so. But then we come to the RH1's firmware. Which was updated 10 (ten) times since the unit was made available to customers.

Installing (not renaming, but actually installing through INF file manipulations) the RH1 driver for, say, an RH910 or an NH600, works, but doesn't give you any new features. But may give you some new and powerful glitches.

Edited June 30, 2008 by Avrin

[Avrin]

Just updated the initial post. You do need to restart your computer in Step 1.

[sfbp]

Just updated the initial post. You do need to restart your computer in Step 1.

Just did a little bit of fiddling. I tried to use only two devices, RH1, and NE410, essentially the newest and the oldest (at least as far as my own ownership goes, maybe not historical) devices.

Since you mention the 052 driver is for the RH1, I left it in place. But I renamed all the other three drivers in every place they could be found on my HD (a. windows\system32 b. c:\program files\sony\personal audio driver), namely

NETMDUSB.SYS (to xNETMDUSB.SYS)

NETMD031.SYS (etc

NETMD033.SYS (etc

And now I hooked up the NE410. Windows now asked for NETMDUSB.SYS

So I gave it (just that one driver, by naming it back). Of course that worked (for the download to the 410).

As soon as I switched back to the RH1, now we are back to x1 uploading.

So now I disconnected RH1, did the trick of looking at the hidden nonpresent devices, and deleted (ONLY) BOTH NetMD devices under USB. I didn't delete anything else at all. Obviously I could simply uninstall the one whose driver is shown (by looking under properties) as NETMDUSB.SYS, leaving the NETMD052.SYS installed.

Plugging the RH1 in now got a device installed (because I just deleted both devices), only one NetMD device now, the one whose driver is NETMD052.SYS.

I'm not sure what the 031 and 033 are, possibly something for one of the other devices. No data yet. But it seemed the whole problem arises from the conflict of NETMDUSB.SYS and NETMD052.SYS.

(

Note added: i looked inside the various .INF files and you can too, sure enough the 033 is required when I put an SP disk into my NH600; it looks like the 031 driver is only required for NE810 and AM-NX9. All the other HiMD units require 033.

Then I confirmed that the 033 driver ALSO causes the 052 driver to go slow; In the driver file list for the RH1 there is now 033 as well as 052, and now it doesn't behave correctly any more. The only way to correct this is to delete the MD device and let Windows rebuild it again.

).

Maybe I'll just set up a second computer for NETMD uploads with the RH1.

[Avrin]

I'm not sure what the 031 and 033 are, possibly something for one of the other devices. No data yet.

The data are in the respective INF files (with same names) under the [ControlFlags] section, in ExcludeFromSelect lines.

The data are not complete.

And the NE410 does actually require the NETMDUSB.SYS file.

Edited June 30, 2008 by Avrin

[sfbp]

I just had a bright idea, what if we could convince the USB devices to hang off two different device chains. Then I would use one connector for the RH1 and another cable entirely for the rest.

YUP, THAT WORKS!

If you check, there are now 2 NetMD devices in the Device Manager List (and two NetMD's listed in SonicStage, wonders will never cease!). One of them is the RH1 and runs at full speed and has only 052 driver. The other has both 052 and 033 (not exactly sure why, someone will probably explain this) and can run the NH600 (with LP2 disk in it) quite fine.

If you're not sure, please don't hesitate to ask questions. I feel like saying "Eureka!". I had all sorts of ideas about lying to the software about drivers, etc etc, but this seems to solve it.

Stephen

[Avrin]

I just had a bright idea, what if we could convince the USB devices to hang off two different device chains. Then I would use one connector for the RH1 and another cable entirely for the rest.

YUP, THAT WORKS!

Until it stops working. I always plug in all my HiMD devices (in any mode) to the same USB port. One of the four.

To me it looks like the whole problem is not a driver issue, but just a glitch...

Edited June 30, 2008 by Avrin

[Avrin]

Turns out it's not a glitch.

Just connected one of my NH600s in NetMD mode. Well, Windows promptly installed its NETMD033.SYS driver. Then I restarted my 'puter. And connected one of my RH1s. The "50 minutes to upload an SP disc" thing was back. Then I followed what is described in my first post here (without restarting). The RH1 works @10x again.

Edited June 30, 2008 by Avrin

[sfbp]

I always plug in all my HiMD devices (in any mode) to the same USB port.

But if you plug the RH1 into one port, and the NH600 into another, you should find (as I did) that they are independent of each other, and that the RH1 NetMD device never "picks up" the 033 driver. No need to uninstall anything once you got it set up right. The older units will never cause the 052 driver to be loaded (you can see why from the .inf file).

And ne'er the twain shall meet. Worse case, delete a device when it goes wrong. I plan on labelling the two cables "RH1" and "the rest"

[raintheory]

Awesome work!

EDIT: Just tried this out, and all I can say is WOW!!! What a difference!!

Absolutely wonderful!

Edited June 30, 2008 by raintheory

[sfbp]

Is it possible that RH1's have been wearing out prematurely because of this bug?

[Richard]

What a great piece of work, awesome topic Avrin

* Thread Pinned

[Avrin]

Is it possible that RH1's have been wearing out prematurely because of this bug?

Quite possible, since it has to work longer to upload the same amount of information. The disc spins/stops more times, etc.

But if you plug the RH1 into one port, and the NH600 into another, you should find (as I did) that they are independent of each other, and that the RH1 NetMD device never "picks up" the 033 driver. No need to uninstall anything once you got it set up right. The older units will never cause the 052 driver to be loaded (you can see why from the .inf file).

And ne'er the twain shall meet. Worse case, delete a device when it goes wrong. I plan on labelling the two cables "RH1" and "the rest"

Just tried this (plugging the NH600 into another USB port). No luck. The RH1 SP upload still slows down. I think this may depend on hardware configurations.

[sfbp]

Just tried this (plugging the NH600 into another USB port). No luck. The RH1 SP upload still slows down. I think this may depend on hardware configurations.

Yes, I deliberately took one cable to the front of the PC, and one to the back. Judging from the list of devices on this particular machine which has always listed no less than 4 USB controllers, I think I managed to get one cable connected to each of two different controllers.

Hint: USB controllers always seem to come in pairs. So if you take the socket closest (horizontal or vertical) to the one you are using, it's possible it may not work.

Good luck!

[Avrin]

Still no luck! I've tried all four USB ports on my notebook. Plugging the NH600 into any of them slows down the RH1 upload. Despite the fact that I also have a set of Intel® 82801EB USB controllers.

[sfbp]

Try going back to the way I did it. Rename all the drivers and only put their right names when the installer pops up asking for file name. Don't try out the upload until the driver list (for each NetMD device) looks clean.

Another thought, have you set the RH1 in SP mode default on record before connecting it? This means that when there is no disc it defaults to NetMD operation. Maybe if it's defaulted to HiMD operation then it goes ahead and dumb-ly loads > 1 driver?

Sorry, I thought this might be simple. I have 4 ports on the back of the machine (on the motherboard) and 2 more on the front. Could it be something about the way Windows manages them?

[Avrin]

Another thought, have you set the RH1 in SP mode default on record before connecting it?

The unit had an SP disc inside before I connected it.

Could it be something about the way Windows manages them?

This is quite possible. Another possibility is that the 4 ports on the back of your machine are physically connected to another controller than the 2 on the front.

Edited July 1, 2008 by Avrin

[sfbp]

The unit had an SP disc inside before I connected it.

Not 100% sure if this counts the same as having the machine default to SP with no disc. I suppose I am imagining writing a driver - and one has to start from certainty. Otherwise users would see different results starting with different discs... states are multiplied by 2.

Another possibility is that the 4 ports on the back of your machine are physically connected to another controller than the 2 on the front.

I agree. That was actually my intention. But I don't see them on the device list.

[1kyle]

Turns out it's not a glitch.

Just connected one of my NH600s in NetMD mode. Well, Windows promptly installed its NETMD033.SYS driver. Then I restarted my 'puter. And connected one of my RH1s. The "50 minutes to upload an SP disc" thing was back. Then I followed what is described in my first post here (without restarting). The RH1 works @10x again.

Maybe a bit of overkill but a possibility is to use a Virtual Machine for uploading RH1 and another VM for uploading music from other MD units.

You can use FREE M$ Virtual PC or VMWARE's VIRTUAL Player. On Linux you can use the Free Virtual Box as your virtualisation software but it's rather unstable.

The best way is to create vmware capable Virtual disks with (FREE) QEMU and then use Vmware's virtual player to run your VM -- this gives you the capability of running and creating Virtual machines compatable with Vmware workstation without the cost of buying vmware workstation.

For Windows follow this link

http://johnbokma.com/mexit/2005/10/26/vmwa...windows-xp.html

For Linux do similar -- download the QEMU Linux package and build the Virtual machine the same way--most Linux distros already have vmware player installed by default --if not just download and install for your linux distro.

You only need to create minimal Windows virtual machines -- you don't have to install all your normal apps. You could probably run these in 256MB RAM easily so even a modest modern dual core laptop could quite comfortably run two of these concurrently.

You might be able to create Windows 2000 virtual machines (avoids problems of Windows XP activations) -- although I'm not sure if the RH1 driver will run on Windows 2000 --in any case the fast usb driver might not work -- Net MD units will be fine on Windows 2000 BTW.

I'm running Net MD transfers on Windows 2000 and the RH1 on Windows XP virtual machines.

Cheers

-K

Edited July 1, 2008 by 1kyle

[sfbp]

Still no luck! I've tried all four USB ports on my notebook. Plugging the NH600 into any of them slows down the RH1 upload. Despite the fact that I also have a set of Intel® 82801EB USB controllers.

OK, i messed around some more. I assume you have 2 players with an SP disk in each. If you don't it never installs the NetMD driver at all.

Try this:

1. install the NH600 onto a clean device map. You get (only) NETMD033.SYS.

2. install the RH1 onto a second cable. What happens is really interesting. You get the 052 driver added to the NH600's USB controller driver list, and the 052 driver as the sole occupant of the RH1's driver list.

Of course, if you do it the other way around, the NH600 gets (only) 033 and the RH1 gets both, which is what you were observing.

So it seems to me that the device driver loader is somehow adding in the new driver to any NetMD device that was already there when you plugged in the new one.

Obviously the solution is to have a way of suppressing this behaviour. For that we need a WinDDK USB driver expert. I'm not sure I'm willing to become one, but I have a WinDDK somewhere, I suspect.

Stephen

[Avrin]

No matter what installation order or port I am using, the NH600 always gets the 033 driver only, and the RH1 always gets the 052 driver only. But, as long as the 033 driver is installed on my system, the RH1 works in the "50 minutes per disc" mode. Then, as soon as I remove the 033 driver, even without removing any other drivers or restarting my computer, the RH1 is back to the 10x mode again (I only have to reconnect it).

Manually replacing the 033 driver with a properly renamed copy of the 052 one and restarting the computer seems to prevent the "50 minutes per disc" effect from occuring, but I won't recommend this option, since, well, it's a SONY.

Edited July 2, 2008 by Avrin

[sfbp]

No matter what installation order or port I am using, the NH600 always gets the 033 driver only, and the RH1 always gets the 052 driver only. But, as long as the 033 driver is installed on my system, the RH1 works in the "50 minutes per disc" mode. Then, as soon as I remove the 033 driver, even without removing any other drivers or restarting my computer, the RH1 is back to the 10x mode again (I only have to reconnect it).

Hmm.. interesting. I definitely got a setup with both hooked up and working. It may be a function of exactly when you restart (even the device map with the nonpresent devices doesn't appear to reflect everything that's going on!!!!!). Even switching from NetMD to HiMD and back with two devices present may be triggering the mixup. We really should try to think of a way of preventing it.

Manually replacing the 033 driver with a properly renamed copy of the 052 one and restarting the computer seems to prevent the "50 minutes per disc" effect from occuring, but I won't recommend this option, since, well, it's a SONY.

By having a "fake" driver for the NH600 you have avoided it loading the right one. The only question now is, will the NH600 actually perform correctly without it? If so, we may have even stumbled upon a way to get uploads, though from what you said about firmwares, and the fact that this stuff is so finicky, I sort of doubt it. This is the sort of kludge I referred to when talking about "renaming" things. HOWEVER, fixing the .inf file may work too. Maybe you have some thoughts on this?

An analysis of the *difference* between the two drivers (argh that WinDDK kit!!!), assuming I have understood you correctly, should give us some information about what the deal on uploading really is.

Stephen

[Avrin]

By having a "fake" driver for the NH600 you have avoided it loading the right one. The only question now is, will the NH600 actually perform correctly without it?

The NH600 and the NH3D do perform correctly with the 052 driver renamed 033. I.e., they do download what they are supposed to download.

[raintheory]

Nevermind... ..answered my own question.

Edited July 4, 2008 by raintheory

[sfbp]

The NH600 and the NH3D do perform correctly with the 052 driver renamed 033. I.e., they do download what they are supposed to download.

That's pretty cool. Well done, again I say, well done.

Edit: of course the other thing we might EASILY do is to edit the .inf, and probably it would even be safe to post it. I can't see Sony having any quarrel with that, as long as it was tested.

[Syrius]

I tried and I cannot find any instance of the Phantom driver options.

[Avrin]

Have you created the variables with exactly the names specified, and enabled the "Show hidden devices" option?

Edited July 6, 2008 by Avrin

[Levanel]

You sure this isn't the problem between USB 1.1 and USB 2.0?

I was under the impression that the RH1 uses the former and the slightly variant M200 uses the latter.

[Syrius]

Yes, and yes, Avrin.

[Avrin]

Yes, and yes, Avrin.

Do any of the drivers mentioned in my first post here appear as non-phantom? In this case remove them all, except "Generic volumes". You'll have to restart the computer after that.

Edited July 8, 2008 by Avrin

[Syrius]

They don't show up. Nor as phantom or as real.

It's not a big deal. I can use my desktop and that uploads at 6X-ish. The laptop is just being stupid.

[Avrin]

Do they show up when your NH900 is connected?

[Levanel]

Hmmm, I tried this method and.. doesn't affect the speed at all. SP uploading is still slow.. tried it last night and it took an hour or so just to transfer.

(I have an N10 but USB was borked on that a looooong time ago so...)