VMS+DVD: "Read only or invalid path" Error Message

[Victor Urbach]

I've been using Ulead MediaStudio for about 4 years now, but based on raves from many folks, I've been thinking about moving over to Vegas 5. To dip my toe in the water, I bought the "Vegas Movie Studio+DVD" entry-level package ($60 after rebate from J&R). Incredible bang for the buck, but I've found Sony tech support to be marginal. For example, I sent this (in my opinion) very detailed problem description seven days ago, and just received an (unhelpful) reply.

===

I have VMS installed in its default directory: "C:\Program Files\Sony\Vegas Movie Studio 4.0." Everything appears to be working correctly, except I cannot "Make Movie" on my D: drive (which has about a hundred gig free.)

VMS will only create media files on my C: drive (which has about 10 gig free). I can save project files, media clips, etc., on D: but when trying to "Make Movie" on D: I get a dialog box titled "Invalid Path" that says:

"Read only or invalid path. Please correct it. [OK]"

Please note that D is a different physical disk. It's the only partition on a Western Digital 160GB 8MB cache IDE (not SATA). The C: drive in this computer is a 200GB Seagate IDE (not SATA). I am able to successfully save to other partitions on the physical disk that contains C.

This appears to be a problem specifically with the D drive, but it works perfectly in the other video editing applications I use (Serious Magic, Ulead, etc.). I'm running as administrator and permissions appear to be set correctly. I've uninstalled and reinstalled VMS. Please advise. Thank you.

===

The (unhelpful) suggestion was to "navigate" to the D:\ drive instead of typing a path in the dialog box. I wrote back saying, "Thank you, but of course, I'd tried that before writing in for help." I've also done my normal Googling around, searching support forums, etc.

Still no joy...

Any ideas? I know I'm on "baby Vegas" but please don't sneer too much. I'm new here.

-Victor Urbach

P.S. VMS is loaded on my dedicated video computer, which has no antivirus, firewall, or flaky drivers installed, or "utilities" running. It's solid as far as I know.

[Rob Lohman]

Welcome aboard DVInfo.net Victor! I agree that your question
was very thorough and detailed. This sounds like a bug to me,
are you running the latest version of the software?

I have no idea how to fix this, but if they cannot resolve this it
might be possible to make hard link on your C drive to your
other drive that the program might accept. However, this
functionality is not easy to access within Windows (even though
it supports it in the core) and requires third party tools (free)
and is a kinda low-level, so let's leave that as the last thing to try.

[Victor Urbach]

Thank you Rob, for your suggestion and nice welcome. I may hold off on the remap idea for now, as I'm just in the playing around stage with VMS and all my other "production" programs are running perfectly. It's a strange problem, and I'm more irked at the slow, unhelpful support at Sony Media than anything else.

Companies say they want users to send an email with their problems -- rather than calling support lines -- but when it takes them a week or more to respond...

-V-

[Victor Urbach]

To provide a bit of closure to this thread, after two weeks of back and forth with Sony Media support, and escalation to their "engineers," they've been unable to resolve my problem.

The solution offered was to refund my money if I returned the disks, manuals, etc.

Not what I was looking for.

-V-

[Rob Lohman]

I'm sorry to hear this. The problem with the PC / Windows platform
is that there are so many permutations of possible software and
hardware combinations that is impossible to test all. On top of
that you just may have a corrupt Windows installation, a virus or
trojan or other form of malware etc.

Which Operating System are you running? What hardware are you
running? If you have the time a re-install of everything might sort
this problem out.

[Victor Urbach]

Thank you Rob.

I'm running a clean install of XP Pro SP-2 on a rock-solid Dell 400SC (P4C 2.4).

Here's a clip of some of my dialogue with Sony Media Support:

Perhaps this additional information will help:

(1) I plugged in an external firewire drive (recognized as drive letter H:). I am able to save files to this drive without a problem.

(2) I have double-checked write permissions and security settings on my D: drive and compared them to other drives in the system. All are OK.

(3) I have checked the drive for logical and physical errors. No problems found.

(4) I ran Norton Utilities diagnostics and CheckIt diagnostics on the system. No problems found.

(5) This is a computer dedicated for video editing. It has no antivirus installed. All drivers are signed. It has been stable for months. No utilities or other programs of that type are running on it. I have disabled the SP-2 XP firewall to debug this problem, but that had no effect one way or the other.

(6) I have run Windows Movie Maker, Ulead MediaStudio, and Visual Communicator on this computer, saving to drive D: with no problems or issues.

(7) Although the problem I'm reporting is specific to my D: drive, it is an issue that occurs exclusively with Vegas Movie Studio. All other applications save just fine on this drive.

To summarize my problem, if I "Make Movie" and "Save it to your hard drive," Immediately after entering any D:\filename or any D:\subfolder\filename, I get the "Invalid Path" "Read only or invalid path. Please correct it [OK]" dialog box.

-V-

[Rob Lohman]

How large are your volumes on all the drives/partitions? Are you
logged in with an Administrator account?

[Victor Urbach]

Yes, logged in as administrator.

As reported in "Computer Management" "Disk Management:"

Disk 0 (C: and E: and F:)
Basic 186.31 GB
C: 14.65 GB NTFS (System)
E: 85.83 GB NTFS
F: 85.83 GB NTFS

Disk 1 (D:)
Basic 149.05 GB
D: 149.05 GB NTFS (Active)

Disk 2 (H: - External Firewire)
Basic 186.31 GB
H: 186.31 GB NTFS (Active)

-V-

[Rob Lohman]

My next guess was going to be that the drive/partition was too
big for VMS to handle, but I see that the H drive/partition is even
larger and that one works.

Is it possible for you to reformat (not quick!) your D drive/partition?
Move stuff on that drive to one of the others, go into disk management,
remove the partition, create a new partition and format that new
partition fully.

See if that helps. Otherwise I guess you are stuck with doing a
make movie to another drive/partition......

[Victor Urbach]

OK. I finally resolved this very strange problem. I don't know what was wrong, but it's fixed now. I had another 160GB WD drive in an external enclosure and swapped it with the the internal D: drive. The "can't save" problem followed the drive into the external enclosure (now drive H: for the record), and the "new" internal D: drive operated without problem. I then swapped the problem drive back into the SC400 and formatted it. Now it works fine.

So puzzling. Besides Vegas Media Studio, every other app I have on that computer saved data on the "problem" drive without issue. Now, after a fresh format, VMS does too.

-V-

[Rob Lohman]

Glad you got it resolved. Sounds like something was corrupt on that
drive somewhere. Still weird that only VMS had problems with it.