com surrogate not working

[Guest]

have tried fixes listed here, but no joy .If Iopen any folder containng
mp3,avi or divx,I still get message "com surogate has stopped working" and
"windows is searching for solution to problem".Computer then shuts down.

 

[anonymous]

Have you tried leaving DEP on for all except COM Surrogate? That solved my
problem.
Right-click on Computer-propertied-advanced then settings under Performance.
Open Data Execution Prevention and put COM surrogate in the exception box.

 

[Guest]

many thanks have tried that, but no success,Any other ideas please ? Have
even tried deleting all avi's but as soon as I try, com surrogate message
comes up again

 

[MICHAEL]

have tried fixes listed here, but no joy .If Iopen any folder containng
mp3,avi or divx,I still get message "com surogate has stopped working" and
"windows is searching for solution to problem".Computer then shuts down.

Some suggestions;

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/wind...surrogate-has-stopped-working-error-in-vista/


-Michael

 

[Guest]

Many thanks Michael ,found answer on computer geeks, Div x codecs were my
problem uninstalled works perfect. GREAT!!!!!

 

[MICHAEL]

You're welcome, Phil.

Be careful of codec packs. They could cause problems
in WinXP, but even more so in Vista. Older versions of
DivX, especially.


-Michael

 

[zachd [MSFT]]

What specific fault bucket was this --
http://zachd.com/pss/pss.html#bucket
? That's always useful to know. =)

 

[MICHAEL]

Your need to know details is admirable, but I seriously doubt
Phil will we back anytime soon. Unless, he encounters
some other problem. Many users who find their way here,
don't come back after finding a resolution. Unfortunately,
a lot of them don't post back if a particular suggestion helped
them or what actually fixed their problem.

How's that reinstall option coming?


-Michael

 

[zachd [MSFT]]

Your need to know details is admirable, but I seriously doubt
Phil will we back anytime soon. Unless, he encounters
some other problem. Many users who find their way here,
don't come back after finding a resolution. Unfortunately,
a lot of them don't post back if a particular suggestion helped
them or what actually fixed their problem.

That's fine, I'm just attempting to continue to further the notion that that
data is really valuable, since it is. I've already noticed a number of
other people asking for and using that data to provide spot-on
trouble-shooting. Admittedly mostly for easy stuff like "faulting module:
xviddec.dll", but it's certainly a useful start.

Given that some people subscribe to responses via various forum front-ends,
given that some people browse by "responses to my posts", given people
responding months later to a given thread - just making sure the proper
trouble-shooting thoughts are out there adds lots of value.

 

[Charlie Tame]

That's fine, I'm just attempting to continue to further the notion that that
data is really valuable, since it is. I've already noticed a number of
other people asking for and using that data to provide spot-on
trouble-shooting. Admittedly mostly for easy stuff like "faulting module:
xviddec.dll", but it's certainly a useful start.

Given that some people subscribe to responses via various forum front-ends,
given that some people browse by "responses to my posts", given people
responding months later to a given thread - just making sure the proper
trouble-shooting thoughts are out there adds lots of value.

As I have mentioned before your presence here is an asset to the group
that is all the more important because it is a "General" group and
therefore not an obvious place to find the more specialized knowledge
you have.

It does appear that "Microsoft" have lost touch with the user base, and
worse still it often "Appears" that they simply don't care. Whether this
is true or not the fact is that "Appearance" does count, and a group of
people denying that problems exist where they clearly do (for some users
at least) and the "Appearance" of constantly trying to pass the buck
onto third parties only leads to more frustration.

I don't know, but I suspect MICHAEL will mostly agree, it is not so much
that anyone "Expects" you to be the expert at everything, it is more to
do with putting a human face on things.

And yes I agree, the above is a useful start, and some real technical
info keywords in the text should help with searches.

 

[zachd [MSFT]]

My tentative unofficial unsupported fix to repair the damage done by
SatelliteTVforPC 2006 -- if you *set a
System Restore point* and then run the reg file in:
http://zachd.com/pss/WMPVistaReset-x86.zip
that should theoretically get the player working again in full.

It's been vetted by two external people and me unofficially. I've handed it
off to the right people to repackage / test / validate as an actual product
support fix for the STV4PC issue.

Of course if you want the whole hog to reinstall, that's a different kind of
impossible beast. I'm slowly unofficially garnering that extensive data and
validating it, but given that if I ever mention anything it tends to float
out there in the ether for...ever, I need to be really careful, even for
this unofficial work, that I unofficially validate that it doesn't spike
RTM, SP1, QFEs, Starter through Ultimate, or any of that sort of thing.
That being said, even at "completion" this won't function as a full
reinstall. That can't be done this way.

Everything I'm working on here could be done by any intreprid soul who
wanted to dedicate a lot of time to the project. If anybody wants things to
move faster, feel free to volunteer yourself. ;-) My ETA for any unofficial
results is June 08. I'll plan on pulling a Scotty against that, but -- it's
not like this is a trivial or small project. =)

 

[MICHAEL]

Zach, thank you for the excellent support you
give in these forums.... I really mean that, and I'm
sure others feel the same way. I know the effort
you've put into this is tremendous.

Will the fix work as a general fix that covers
more than just the SatelliteTVforPC issue?

If you need me to test something for you,
I'd be more than happy to give you a hand.
I have three Vista machines and two Vista
virtual machines..... and I'm a backup freak.

The email in my headers is valid.


Take care,

Michael

 

[zachd [MSFT]]

Thanks. It's really a virtuous cycle when it goes well. I've done a lot of
good things for y'all lately thanks to the helpful tips and data people have
provided. (In many cases it's the stuff I stumble across during
investigation that adds the significant value. In fact, I need to go thank
a guy who indirectly helped me get a major codec pack to stop breaking
Windows. Thanks for indirectly reminding me.)

The unofficial fix below is meant to cover just the SatelliteTVforPC issue,
but cannot be practically limited to that. It was generated through a diff
of these two deltas:
* vista rtm
* vista rtm + satellitetvforpc
* vista sp1
* vista sp1 + satellitetvforpc
Since they're stomping on generic WMP settings (as opposed to doing anything
interesting themselves, such as when MMSwitch inserts its filter onto the
system and things start blowing up), the REG file visibly is restoring those
settings. (This is easy to verify through manual inspection of the REG
file.)

A more interesting application of establishing a known delta, what you've
indirectly asked for and I was curious about way before we ran into each
other, was the delta between:
* vista rtm N
* vista rtm N + Media Restore Pack (or whatever it's called, my
apologies to anyone offended)
* vista sp1 N
* vista sp1 N + Media Restore Pack
Then you should be able to take that delta and apply it to an RTM or SP1
system and get no changes. You should be able to take that delta to some
misconfigured system and have the WMP-relevant pieces *potentially*
corrected. But VFW/DShow/WMFSDK/MF have always been inclusive systems, so
mileage varies significantly from situation to situation.

I'm assuming we're on the same page so far, this is all pretty logical.

The problems:
* x86 vs x64 cannot be solved by this lazy solution path
* a lot of that delta uses hardcoded paths still, so it's not portable
* not everything that compromises the WMP chain is going to be addressed
in this capacity, as it never has been
* anything that deltas directly between RTM and SP1 or any QFEs should
not be touched by this, since while I want to hope everybody is at
latest/greatest/safest/stablest, that's not a fair-to-you assumption
The more interesting solution will always be a component based servicing
component reinstall, but that's not supported by the current architecture.
That is the *only* correct way of doing this, which is accomplished by a
Vista reinstall. (I'm not politicking, simply pointing this out because
it's not fair to mislead people, and if people don't understand this, it
makes my job/life harder.)

Aaaanyways, so the long story short is that if you look for
"vista-x86-cdrive-rereg.zip" in your favorite search engine you'll find a
work in progress here, but of course it's x86-only cdrive-only and still
very much a work in progress.

I have no idea when I'll have time to finish that. If that was perpetuated
in any fashion, I'd be pretty angry since it's incompetent workmanship on my
part so far. The only real use of that at this point is to do a comparison
against, but you'd have to write a tool to do that. Or you could ideally
export your x86 c-drive registry to a REGEDIT4 (NT4) REG file, compare that
to the rereg.reg file, and establish what's only present or changed in the
rereg.reg file. This is ugly. Again, I'll think about this over time.
It's really a tangent to my normal work, and my personal time has remained
really sadly crowded. Still, it's probably more than you had, and the
SatelliteTVforPC reg file should work pretty well.

Again, the problem with the whole idea of "reinstalling WMP" is the
implication that something has corrupted known WMP settings. That implies a
buggy third party application that needs to be fixed immediately before they
break other people. Directly providing a reinstall in that situation is
actually counter-productive to keeping Windows stable: the proper fix path
would be to log to support so they can track Rogue Application X who then
can provide a (better) method for recovery). I try to keep track of
applications rumored to be involved in bad things - there's not usually a
month when I don't send friendly and helpful "please fix this by
specifically doing this" requests to 3rd party vendors.

Aaaanyways, way too much talking on my part. =)

#1 way to keep multimedia on Windows stable: avoid codec packs. I'll be
really personally pleased when the top crashes in WMP are no longer due to
MMSwitch.ax and old versions of FFDShow.ax . That's just sooooo avoidable.
=(