Windows7/CS5/Cineform

[Bob Hart]

Whatever goes awry in this unholy menage-a-trois that causes a hard shutdown, damages the OS and causes subsequent failure to boot up due to a lockup at the "Welcome" splash screen, -- try hitting the "enter" key with machine gun rapidity when the "Welcome" first starts moving and keep it up despite the little tone telling you to desist. It seems to work.

I have run out of more logical solutions.


In addition, CS5, Cineform or W7 have munted the project, 17 hours worth of work so far and it cannot be recovered. This is seriously not good.

Hopefully, the entities involved might begin to stop blaming each other and get it sorted once and for all.

Computer is an I7, approved components, motherboard, 16gb memory etc..

[David Newman]

Sounds like a hardware issue, software alone can't do that. As with all Premiere projects that will not load, creating a new project and try importing the old project file into the new project. If that fails, you can rule at CineForm by removing our components, as we are not needed to load the project (only edit picture data after.) So if a corrupt file is killing a project load within a CineForm component (unlikely but could happen) you can load the project with the media offline -- help you narrow down where the corruption is.

[Bob Hart]

David.


Thanks for your prompt response. I'll give your suggestion a shot.

[Bob Hart]

David.


Your suggestion appears to have rescued the project, so thanks for that. As for the computer, the operating system remains flakey. After closing out of Premiere and shutting down, then restarting, Premiere itself now simply refuses to launch. This is the first computer in a long while I have bought and not assembled myself. I wish I had done it myself now as nothing much has changed.

[Jay West]

From personal experience, I would suspect goofiness in a Windows Update as the most likely culprit.

Have you tried a system restore? Can you get into safe mode and roll back to a point before the most recent Windows Updates?

I've run into this issue several times on on my system. (Win7 Pro, I7, ASUS P6t, 12gb Ram, GTX260). I was able to rule out hardware issues (an advantage of having a dual boot system with a second OS on a physically separate hard drive). I also eliminated both CS5 and Cineform as culprits. In every case, the problem occurred onthe reboot following a Windows update. (And before anybody vaults up on a soapbox to proclaim the wicked stupidity of allowing auto-updates, let me point out that I have auto-updates switched off and usually have the ethernet cable disconnected during editing sessions. Win 7 insidiously switches auto-updates back on.)

A system restore eliminated the problem in all but one instance. The one time it did not, last February, the Update corrupted all of my restore points. Even restoring from the system backup did not fix the problem. I had to reinstall Win 7 and the apps. (In every instance, a subsequent re-download of the offending critical updates went without a hitch.)

The good news (to the extent there could be any) is that all the video, Cineform files and edit files were usually fine and I could resume the project where I had left off. I say "usually" because on the first or second time this happened, I had tried to force CS5 to run after getting into Windows after bypassing the splash screen by hitting the enter key as suggested. This did something to the project file and everything seemed lost. (Lots of video, too; a three hour multi-cam dance event shot with six cameras and the Cineform conversions). However, after I tried a system restore and went to the "save as copy" version of the project, everything was fine. (I also could have gone into the project's auto-save folder and used one of the auto-saved project versions.)

[Bob Hart]

Jay.


Thanks for the hint on the autosaves.

[Gerald Webb]

For those that think your PC will self destruct if you dont update,
It doesnt.
First thing I do on every install, is disable Windows update, then tell Windows not to tell me that I have it turned off.
Installed 7 when it came out, never updated, it was great.
Re installed 7SP1 a few weeks ago to do a tidy up and wont update again till Windows 8 comes out.
You just dont need all that extra stuff on an edit PC,
However, if you are a porn and/or online poker addict.....
maybe thats a different story. lol.

[Julian Frost]

Gerald,

If your computer is running Windows, and it's connected to the Internet, you absolutely *do* need to run Windows update. There are many, many, zero-day exploits out there, which the bad guys use to find weaknesses on computer systems connected to the Internet.

What this means, is that when Microsoft becomes aware of an exploit, and writes a patch to fix it, the bad guys look at the patch, determine exactly what was fixed, and why it was fixed, and use that knowledge to create malware that takes advantage of those exploits on unpatched computers. They can then start scanning IP addresses of systems without the patch, and exloit them (turn them into bots, or whatever).

With millions of bad guys out there, with access to millions of already botted systems, sending out hundreds of millions sniffer packets every day, it won't be long until they find an unprotected computer. The innocent computer user may not even know his/her system was compromised, especially if the malware installed was based on root-kit technology.

My recommendation: ALWAYS install the Important updates, and choose the others wisely.

[Gerald Webb]

Jullian, dont take this as argument, more a report of my own experience
I dont profess to know a lot about hackers, internet security, hackers and other such animals,
but,
I do know that since I havent been allowing Windows to do whatever it pleases when it pleases, my workstation runs better and faster, starts up and shuts down immediately,
I dont even run anti-virus.
Actually, I lie, occasionally if I think something is a bit fishy, I run Malwarebytes.

Quote,
They can then start scanning IP addresses of systems without the patch, and exloit them (turn them into bots, or whatever).

I was told by my local PC shop that I'm hidden from the net by my routers firewall, would this be the cause of my good luck?
I dont know, but if it isnt working for some people with updates turned on, I was just referring to my user experience of having them turned off which for about 3 years now has been fantastic. Actually had to format my iMac once during this time because of an unknown virus.
Score so far- Windows is one up.

[Julian Frost]

Your firewall will protect you from a LOT of attacks (assuming it's set up correctly, including turning off uPNP etc).

However, there are many thing that can happen when you your computer is not updated via Windows Update. For example, if you make the mistake of opening a web browser on your unprotected system and visit a web site, there's no guarantee that the web site has not been compromised in some way, and the simple act of visiting it has taken advantage of a zero-day exploit. What if you you open a PDF file to view instructions on operating your new piece of gear, and it has been infected? Sure, Microsoft's update may not protect you there, since it's a problem with the Adobe Reader installed on your system, but when that malware PDF file requires an operating system flaw in order to do damage, or root-kit your system, you would have been covered.

I would say that, if your computer is connected to the Internet, and you have the strength of character to NEVER open a web browser on your system, or install ANY non-Adobe (for example!) software or apps, then you MAY be able to get by without doing Windows updates, including the important ones, though you may be missing some important Windows bug fixes which would make your system even more stable. That said, I personally would much rather apply those updates, and be able to roll back to a state before they were installed, thanks to the Restore Point that Windows creates automatically prior to doing any updating, or a full system backup.

[Bart Walczak]

Personally I found that unless you are careless, open the files of unknown origin or do some really stupid things, it is enough to have a decent firewall and some common sense to avoid problems. The day I decided to get rid of antivirus software two years ago made the best time for my workstation since :)

[Jay West]

In my own case, I let Windows tell me about updates so I can limit the updates to the critical security patches. I also periodically check for updates and upgrades to my editing-related software. I have a pretty good hardware firewall in my router, but I regard that as a safety belt and not my primary protection.

That said, I completely understand what Bart said about dumping his antivirus two years ago. I headed in that direction myself when the 2009 versions of the antivirus programs (the ones available when Win 7 was released) were nothing but trouble for video editing. For a while, I was downloading everything to a different computer and then copying it over to portable drives to move onto the editing workstation. Frankly, I found the copy-from-another-computer was just too cumbersome and time consuming for me. Since then, I've found that both the current Norton Internet Security 2011 and Microsoft's Windows Essentials to be much less troublesome software on my system.

In addition to application updates, I also want a security program for a couple of other reasons. One is that my Adobe CS5 was obtained a s a download and only has on-line help. Another is that some of my work involves files from customers. I want their files scanned before I ingest the files to my system. Also, some of them customers want files uploaded to or downloaded from their sites. So, I simply choose to run a security package. As I said previously, where I've had trouble is with with Windows surreptitiously turning auto-updates back on and downloading all sorts of junk including updates to Mircorsoft Office products I do not even have on the computer. That is why I try to check periodically to make sure that Windows auto-updates is off.

Malwarebytes, recommended by Gerald, is a useful tool but it seems to me have limitations because it is primarily a repair tool for dealing with malware and adware. I've found it most useful for removing malware from the computers of friends who used MacAfee as their AV progam. (To me, it seems that MacAfee AV is particularly vulnerable to the phony security-alert scamware.) As I see it, the whole point in having AV/Security Software is to avoid getting those problems in the first place.

But, we are getting far afield from the OP's question about how to deal with Win 7, Cineform and CS5 getting flummoxed. His problem may or may not have been caused by a Windows Update and he did not even mention antivirus. Maybe he can check on this and see if we need to continue this line of the discussion.

[Ben Turley]

Compared to (long)past experience of other commercial antivirus, Microsoft Security Essentials is lightweight, cleanly removable and doesn't seem to hog the processor. It is also free which makes me happy, particularly after shelling out for CS5.

One piece of software that has caused me problems is Trusteer Rapport. Downloaded as (strongly) recommended by my bank for online transactions, it guaranteed a crash within minutes for the combination of CS4 or CS5 and Cineform, plus made Adobe Media Encoder really unstable in general. I had to turn it off before any video editing.

NAT translations in your router, a good firewall, turning off Javascript and Flash for websites you do not explicitely trust and avoiding dodgy ones will give you a fair degree of protection, but Windows is a massive bit of software with a long and colourful history of exploits and patches - it really is advisable to install updates listed in the 'important' section. Forget the 'optional' ones if you want.

Windows does tend to slow down over time - a complete reinstall every now and again is a big hassle but can have a noticeable effect; that deterioration is far more likely to be from third party software cruft and the detritus of unistalls and websurfing than security patches.

If you do a clean install, CTL/ALT/DEL, choose Task Manager and note the 'Processes' number on the bottom left. Then have a look - without starting any software - once you've installed peripheral drivers, iTunes, assorted Adobe Software, NVIDIA and anything else. A lot of stuff runs in the background and if nothing else can cause the delay in being able to do anything at startup - the desktop will appear well before everything has finished loading up. Laptops are even worse with all the extraneous rubbish manufacturers seem to insist on bunging in and calling features.