Hollywood Plus card won't work after SP1-related upgrade

[John Citizen]

Hi,
I am running Windows XP Pro and I have a Sigma Designs RealMagic Hollywood
Plus (http://www.sigmadesigns.com) which stopped working after I installed
some updates. I haven't actually installed SP1, but pretty much everything
else apart from it (mainly to protect myself from the worm).

Last night when I went to play a DVD, I got an MCI error message. This would
have been the first time I tried to use the device since applying the
updates, which leads me to beleive it is in some way related to them. I then
made sure I had the very latest drivers
(http://www.realmagic.com/support/download_hollywood_plus_win2000.htm).
Didn't change anything. I uninstalled it and let XP detect it - no problems
there. But this time instead of getting an error message, the view program
(DVD Station) did nothing. It detected that a DVD was there, but wouldn't
play it. It also couldn't play ordinary MPEG files on the local hard disk.
Tried uninstalling the application AND the drivers, then letting XP detect
it again, still won't work.

I tried taking the card out of the system, rebooting and getting back into
XP (so that the BIOS and XP could see that the card was no longer part of
the system), then shut down and installed the card again. This didn't make
any difference.

I also tried rolling back the system to before I put on the latest lot of
updates (back to a time when I knew the card was working), but I got an
error saying that it was unable to restore the system.

Apart from that, I'm not getting any weird errors or bluescreens, just my
favourite DVD viewer program won't work! :( The device does show up
correctly in the system hardware listing. As I mentioned, it was working
perfectly fine on older drivers (which I have since tried again to no avail)
BEFORE I applied the latest updates. I could uninstall each one and see if
that makes a difference... but, what a pain that would be!

Anyway, if anyone has any experience with this or knows how to fix it,
please let me know! (reply to the group please, my email address won't work
(spam preventer!)). Thanks in advance for any help and assistance you may be
able to provide!

Cheers,

John C.

[John Citizen]

Hello all,
I seem to have solved this problem. It turns out that some of the updates
have re-enabled CTFMON.EXE, which was mentioned in the Readme.txt for the
latest drivers. However, the readme.txt file only mentioned that this file
interferes with playing encrypted movies, when infact it interfered with the
ability to play anything!

"John Citizen" > wrote in message
...
> Hi,
> I am running Windows XP Pro and I have a Sigma Designs RealMagic Hollywood
> Plus (http://www.sigmadesigns.com) which stopped working after I installed
> some updates. I haven't actually installed SP1, but pretty much everything
> else apart from it (mainly to protect myself from the worm).
>
> Last night when I went to play a DVD, I got an MCI error message. This
would
> have been the first time I tried to use the device since applying the
> updates, which leads me to beleive it is in some way related to them. I
then
> made sure I had the very latest drivers
> (http://www.realmagic.com/support/download_hollywood_plus_win2000.htm).
> Didn't change anything. I uninstalled it and let XP detect it - no
problems
> there. But this time instead of getting an error message, the view program
> (DVD Station) did nothing. It detected that a DVD was there, but wouldn't
> play it. It also couldn't play ordinary MPEG files on the local hard disk.
> Tried uninstalling the application AND the drivers, then letting XP detect
> it again, still won't work.
>
> I tried taking the card out of the system, rebooting and getting back
into
> XP (so that the BIOS and XP could see that the card was no longer part of
> the system), then shut down and installed the card again. This didn't make
> any difference.
>
> I also tried rolling back the system to before I put on the latest lot of
> updates (back to a time when I knew the card was working), but I got an
> error saying that it was unable to restore the system.
>
> Apart from that, I'm not getting any weird errors or bluescreens, just my
> favourite DVD viewer program won't work! :( The device does show up
> correctly in the system hardware listing. As I mentioned, it was working
> perfectly fine on older drivers (which I have since tried again to no
avail)
> BEFORE I applied the latest updates. I could uninstall each one and see if
> that makes a difference... but, what a pain that would be!
>
> Anyway, if anyone has any experience with this or knows how to fix it,
> please let me know! (reply to the group please, my email address won't
work
> (spam preventer!)). Thanks in advance for any help and assistance you may
be
> able to provide!
>
> Cheers,
>
> John C.
>
>