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SonicStage crashes on startup since a few days (since a Windows 7 auto-update ?)

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febed01

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Hi everyone, I'on on Window 7, and SonicStage 4.3 used to work very well... until a few days ago. Windows did an auto-update and now... SS crashes on startup so I can't use it to transfer audio files... and I'm stuck.

I tried to uninstall/reinstall but in vain.

Anybody have the same problem ?

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Any good with regedit?

Try finding this:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Sony Corporation\SonicStage\EMD\HomeURL

or this if 64-bit Windows, but you knew that :)

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Sony Corporation\SonicStage\EMD\HomeURL

Just delete the key and all values inside it.

Tell us if that helps

Stephen

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  • 2 weeks later...

Maybe we need to sticky that one...... people?

PS I am most curious - I can see peeking out from your SS screen the message "2304 kbps". What on earth is that, please? Never heard of such a high bit rate in SS - or is this some sort of erroneous reportage?

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I'm thinking it's a file that's recorded in 24-bit resolution, so that would make it higher than a red book cd which is 16-bit. It would be nice if the person could reply of course, he must be too busy recording in the highest rates for his studio clients to answer our questions lol.

Not that you can actually hear the difference mind you. I had a 24-bit recorder and got rid of it because it was just too confusing switching things all the time. Sometimes limitations can actually help with your workflow.

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  • 3 weeks later...

About the high bitrate files, they are from 24 bits FLAC files I converted to WAV so they could be recognised by SS.

Some online legal music download offers now up to 24 bits (FLAC or Apple Lossless) quality (mainly for classical or jazz ; pop music often stays mp3).

It may be a little overkill because I don't really have Audiophile-standards devices, but some years ago I encoded CDs to 128Kbps mp3, and I don't have the CDs anymore, and now I regret having use a poor quality format. So now I prefer having the best encoding available (hard drives are so big nowadays), as masters, and re-encode them according to the need and the media.

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  • 2 years later...

Hi folks,

I've been having the same problem with SonicStage crashing. It used to be fine, and now it crashes as soon as it opens. I've uninstalled it, re-installed it, deleted registry keys as you suggest above, re-booted, altogether three times, but nothing seems to work. Here's the problem signature:

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: Omgjbox.exe
Application Version: 4.3.1.14020
Application Timestamp: 45c31a1c
Fault Module Name: ntdll.dll
Fault Module Version: 6.1.7601.17725
Fault Module Timestamp: 4ec49b8f
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 000222b2
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.768.3
Locale ID: 2057
Additional Information 1: 3535
Additional Information 2: 35357a94fc5ecd0e3fd24160eb4b2595
Additional Information 3: a711
Additional Information 4: a71100f6f56e2aee0ca32a8d595750ba


I'm stuck with 3 albums on my mp3 player, so please help!

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  • 8 months later...

:help: Oh the Humanity! :help:

I've just started having the same problem on my Windows 7 64-bit machine; SonicStage crashes everytime I try to load it ever since Windows applied updates on 13 December. All I get is the generic "SonicStage Application has stopped working" message...thank-you for being so helpful, Windows :angry: :angry: :angry: .

I tried restoring my laptop to prior to the updates installing, but the restore failed and gave me a BSoD and I lost the only restore point I had that was prior to the update. Tried uninstalling & reinstalling only to find that Sony has closed the download server, effectively killing SonicStage. Luckily I discovered this forum with the "SonicStage 4.3 Ultimate Edition" and promptly signed up so I could download it, but even with this installed I'm still encountering the same problem.

Tried the registry edit, but HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREWow6432NodeSony CorporationSonicStageEMDHomeURL doesn't exist so that won't fix the problem - has anybody found anyway to fix this other than the registry edit solution?

Gotta say, this is killing me! I love my Walkman and SonicStage both and I am NOT ready to let them go, so any help at all would be appreciated.

Thanks!

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I wonder if this could be something odd, like NOT installing 64-bit NetMD drivers - and whatever is there (in the package, which was intended for Win32, the 64-bit driver zip file being something we cooked up later) crashes.

Another option, not to be taken separately but quite possibly in conjunction with the above - did they (MSFT) suddenly turn on some setting in the latest update, like enforcing driver signing and/or DEP? The executive that handles the conversion and encryption is a funny beast containing lots of self-modifying code. Windows switches users to execute some of it, I believe. I would, for a start get rid of all anti-virus software before you panic.

Let us know, please.

Welcome to our forums.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Well I am at an utter loss to explain this, but SonicStage is working again. Joy :imsohappy:!!!

All I did was boot into safe mode and try running SonicStage. The first time I tried I got the expected error message saying the application had stopped working, but with a weirdly optimistic sense of persevenence I decided to try again, and this time it worked! SonicStage started up, no error messages were displayed and I was able to access the menus, etc. This was all on a blank database, so I shut SS down again, copied across the backup of my database and restarted; and SS still worked. All my artist & album details loaded correctly, I could change views and sort lists; basically everything seemed to be running fine...touch wood.

So to confirm that this wasn't just a fluke, or would only work in safe mode, I restarted Windows and openned SS again - still working!!! Sooooooo Happy :D

I have no idea what may have changed for SS to suddenly start working again, and frankly, as long as it continues to work, I don't really care.

Just thought I'd update on the status of this on the off chance it may help someone else.

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Sounds like Dll hell all over again. This wasn't supposed to happen but increasingly reports of weird stuff in recent windows versions make me think bad things are happening with system dll updates and the like.

For my money you should turn off automatic updates.

HNY

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  • 5 months later...

Well I am at an utter loss to explain this, but SonicStage is working again. Joy :imsohappy:!!!

All I did was boot into safe mode and try running SonicStage. The first time I tried I got the expected error message saying the application had stopped working, but with a weirdly optimistic sense of persevenence I decided to try again, and this time it worked! SonicStage started up, no error messages were displayed and I was able to access the menus, etc. This was all on a blank database, so I shut SS down again, copied across the backup of my database and restarted; and SS still worked. All my artist & album details loaded correctly, I could change views and sort lists; basically everything seemed to be running fine...touch wood.

So to confirm that this wasn't just a fluke, or would only work in safe mode, I restarted Windows and openned SS again - still working!!! Sooooooo Happy :D

I have no idea what may have changed for SS to suddenly start working again, and frankly, as long as it continues to work, I don't really care.

Just thought I'd update on the status of this on the off chance it may help someone else.

Same thing happened to me again with a recent Windows upddate, and for a wonder, the same fix also worked again.

Honestly, I've no idea why this should work, but it's done it for me twice now, so colour-me-happy.

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Starting to guess what kind of c&*p might be going on under the covers here. Probably Sony does some self-modifying code to handle a few things (eg encryption, but it may be inherent in their architecture, I have read a bit about their efforts to make "tamper-proof" software). Probably that got cached and the update somehow voided some saved values.

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Yes, maybe that has something to do with my problem that SonicStage Ultimate has stopped reading WAV files:

But the program worked on my system last time I tried (before this time) but that was a couple of months ago and it works on a computer at work I tried it on today, also with a fully updated 64-bit Win7...

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  • 2 weeks later...

Suggest your next move is to uninstall all NetMD drivers (or at least disable anything showing up with a yellow exclam in device driver).

Another thing you might try is to see if Windows Update changed the REQUIREMENT to have signed device drivers, or perhaps to turn on DAP without telling us.

I am extremely wary of WU, so I haven't run into this (yet).

If none of that helps, you are going to have to physically remove the MD from your system, and get rid of every trace of NetMD drivers. This is a rather nasty procedure since they (well, the *.inf) get copied to C:Windowsinf as "oem<nn>.inf". You can see by looking for the dates on all such files (when you added them, rather than their original creation dates), and then searching for the text "Sony Net MD" to identify them.

When you're done, you can now install ONLY the NETMD760 64-bit driver. This may fix the problem.

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I've been reading this thread just out of interest really and there's one thing that puzzles me. That is, why is this problem affecting some users but not others?

 

I downloaded SonicStage Ultimate from this sight together with the drivers around Christmas 2012. My laptop is running 64 bit Windows 7, and I get all Windows updates automatically yet I have never experienced any problems with SonicStage.

 

If anyone would like me to check any of the settings, configuration, etc, on my laptop shout up. Perhaps if we can pinpoint some fundamental differences somewhere you may be on the right path to a fix.

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I'm guessing that some people have fallen victim to "unintentional 3rd-party-itis". Things like Virus Scans from McAfee or the Ask.com toolbar, and that one of these routinely interferes with SS. But maybe not until the machine is somewhat overloaded.

 

Is it possible that all these machines have something in common like a lot of swapping to pagefile.sys?

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This has been happening to me on and off for several months but I can't remember the original circumstances, or whether it followed a particular update.  However I have discovered that it only fails when I am connected to the internet, normally about twenty seconds into the session.  It loads perfectly when I disconnect from the internet and remains active once running, even if I reconnect to the internet.

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  • 2 months later...

Same thing happened to me again with a recent Windows upddate, and for a wonder, the same fix also worked again.

 

Honestly, I've no idea why this should work, but it's done it for me twice now, so colour-me-happy.

 

Thank you! It worked for me, too. I'd tried all the other methods suggested and was starting to get desperate. 

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  • 1 year later...
On 01/01/2014 at 5:02 AM, Ferg said:

Well I am at an utter loss to explain this, but SonicStage is working again. Joy :imsohappy:!!!

 

All I did was boot into safe mode and try running SonicStage.

 

Just thought I'd update on the status of this on the off chance it may help someone else.

Many thanks for posting. I was a recent victim of SonicStage crashing on startup and after many attempts to get it going again, (reinstall, system restore, sweaty palpitations, etc) I came across this thread and tried the Safe Mode fix and it worked for me too. I can relate to the joy you experienced last year!

Despite the obsolete issue I've been carrying on with MD/SS regardless as it does everything I want from a portable/music management solution. However, this issue with SS was a bit of a wakeup call. It's made me nervous - will SS continue to work forever or is it wise to plan for the future without it?

 

 

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It seems to be fine in W10 (judging by reports, that is - I've no intention of trying it myself!)

I think what happens (on reflection) is something along the lines of: Windows caches something not cacheable in its attempt to optimize things. Sony then does some nasty trick with self modifying code, or perhaps updates some certificates we simply don't know the details of, to secure its encryption in an ongoing manner. All fine, but the result no longer matches what Windows cached. Safe mode probably clears the cache (I'll bet there are other ways).

It may also be that Windows own certificates change and Sony's encryption is tied to the machine keys, with the same general outline as above.

 

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