SonicStage fails under Win 10 !!!

[wolb1]

Recently I upgraded from Win 7 to Win 10. SonicStage did open normally but it was not able to transfer to CD. The drive was not recognized and all options greyed out.

 

After this, I searched for a new version and found one titled “Ultimate”. After installing new from this source, SS did not even run. It said always

 

Runtime error in Visual C++

 

Even installing it from the old source file gave the same exception errors. I investigated the type of error and found out:

 

Function Create Mutex | Access denied.

 

I do not know why!

 

After many new trials of installing this software and many different runtime errors, finally I managed to make the program running again. It is running only in Compatibility Mode for XP!!! Also the tool:

 

'SonicStage System Information Restore Tool'

 

was running at startup and successful.

 

But yet now, I tested all my albums and found out, that only those I had formerly exported without software protection could be played. The others showed the well known error:

 

"Cannot play this track because the licensing information cannot be found. Please contact the source from which you received this track from"

 

This is very great sh***t!!!

 

Can any body help me or post her/his other experiences with SonicStage and Windows 10?

 

I have about 14 GB of music albums and do not want to loose most of them. Prior to the new SS installation I had made a SS data backup, but I don't know if restoring from backup would help.

 

[wolb1]

Supplement:

I have tried VLC player 2.2.1 that can play the files, even SonicStage cannot. So it could be possible to convert them into WAV by the VLC player and reimport them into SonicStage. But this is not recommendable as solution, IMHO!

[sfbp]

This is nothing to do with Windows 10. Its behaviour is BY DESIGN to stop people copying music and giving it away - this is (well, was) a legal issue for Sony or they might be found liable of encouraging piracy by the music companies.

What you have to do is to go back to a working system and run the File Conversion Tool (look on the menu of Sonic Stage in the main "Library" screen, i.e, not the transfer screens) on the files in your 14GB library. UNcheck the box marked "Add copy protection" after it has gone through the database looking for which files to convert.

When you are done, this library will be importable into the new Sonic Stage setup.

Restoring from Backup depends on the Sony server being online. There are reports of people doing this, but I have never done it myself. It should be able to fix the problem.

There may be a way to get back the keys that your "upgrade" threw away. It's possible that they are in:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Sony Shared\OpenMG\

Look in the following (sub)directories (particularly at dates) to see what's going on:

OMGKEY

OMGRIGHT (it's hidden so you will have to display hidden files and directories)

restorable

You will have to do a very careful compare with the state of your hard drive before installing W10. You did a backup, right?

The moral of this story is that backups (simple file copies) of the music data are useless if the files are DRM-protected. FCT gets rid of this but you have to start from a working system.

As far as recognizing the CD, you can generally trick SS into doing so by DELETING (uninstalling) the device from Windows Device Manager. NOW REBOOT. This ought to force Windows to make new ID's at which point SS will realise that it's got a new drive. Automatic calibration/testing should follow.

Stephen