Dear Microsoft - UAC (.png & wmp) issues should be addressed.

[JK of Seattle]

Zach:

My registry entries are as follows:

HKCR\MIME\Database\Content Type\image/x-png

Default REG_SZ (value not set)
Extension REG_SZ .png
Image Filter CLSID REG_SZ {A3CCEDF7-2DE2-11D0-86F4-00A0C913F750}


HKCR\MIME\Database\Content Type\image/png

Default REG_SZ (value not set)
Extension REG_SZ .png
Image Filter CLSID REG_SZ {A3CCEDF7-2DE2-11D0-86F4-00A0C913F750}


HKCR\Software\Classes\PROTOCOLS\Filter\image/png

****** HKCR\Software does not have a classes subfolder ******


The following entries below do exist in registry:

HKCR\PNGFilter.CoPNGFilter

Default REG_SZ CoPNGFilter Class

HKCR\PNGFilter.CoPNGFilter\CLSID

Default REG_SZ {A3CCEDF7-2DE2-11D0-86F4-00A0C913F750}

HKCR\PNGFilter.CoPNGFilter.1

Default REG_SZ CoPNGFilter Class

HKCR\PNGFilter.CoPNGFilter.1\CLSID

Default REG_SZ {A3CCEDF7-2DE2-11D0-86F4-00A0C913F750}


HKCR\CLSID\{A3CCEDF7-2DE2-11D0-86F4-00A0C913F750}

Default REG_SZ CoPNGFilter Class

HKCR\CLSID\{A3CCEDF7-2DE2-11D0-86F4-00A0C913F750}\InProcServer32

Default REG_SZ C:\Windows\system32\pngfilt.dll
ThreadingModel REG_SZ Both

HKCR\CLSID\{A3CCEDF7-2DE2-11D0-86F4-00A0C913F750}\ProgID

Default REG_SZ PNGfilter.CoPNGFilter.1

 

[IkidUnot]

Wez:

when you said "...the same thing was screwing up my swf & wmv playback"
does this mean that just fixing the HKCU keys for the PNG funtionality fixed
WMP too?

Just looking for clarification. Thanks for the great detective work. This
is making me (and plenty of others, I'll bet) hopeful!

 

[JSandPC]

Zach, here are my registy entries for those keys...
I can only assume that you meant to write HKCR instead of HKCU, because HKCU
has no MIME listed.

So far these are suspect:
HKCU\MIME\Database\Content Type\image/x-png ........(below)
HKCU\MIME\Database\Content Type\image/png ..........(below)
HKCU\Software\Classes\PROTOCOLS\Filter\image/png .......(could not find)
for IE's issue. What are the subkeys/values there?

Here is the info...

Key Name: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MIME\Database\Content Type\image/x-png
Class Name: <NO CLASS>
Last Write Time: 1/18/2008 - 2:56 PM
Value 0
Name: Extension
Type: REG_SZ
Data: .png

Value 1
Name: Image Filter CLSID
Type: REG_SZ
Data: {A3CCEDF7-2DE2-11D0-86F4-00A0C913F750}


Key Name: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MIME\Database\Content
Type\image/x-png\Bits
Class Name: <NO CLASS>
Last Write Time: 1/18/2008 - 2:56 PM
Value 0
Name: 0
Type: REG_BINARY
Data:
00000000 08 00 00 00 ff ff ff ff - ff ff ff ff 89 50 4e 47 ....ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ.PNG
00000010 0d 0a 1a 0a ....

Key Name: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MIME\Database\Content Type\image/png
Class Name: <NO CLASS>
Last Write Time: 1/18/2008 - 2:56 PM
Value 0
Name: Extension
Type: REG_SZ
Data: .png

Value 1
Name: Image Filter CLSID
Type: REG_SZ
Data: {A3CCEDF7-2DE2-11D0-86F4-00A0C913F750}


Key Name: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MIME\Database\Content Type\image/png\Bits
Class Name: <NO CLASS>
Last Write Time: 1/18/2008 - 2:56 PM
Value 0
Name: 0
Type: REG_BINARY
Data:
00000000 08 00 00 00 ff ff ff ff - ff ff ff ff 89 50 4e 47 ....ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ.PNG
00000010 0d 0a 1a 0a ....

 

[zachd [MSFT]]

OK, this is all very good data so far.

Let's turn to the WMP side of this issue:
* What third party software is installed? I'm primarily interested in codec
packs and that sort of thing.
* When you run WMP in Admin mode, what is listed in WMP's
Help:About:Technical Support Information menu tool?

I would *love* to look at a registry trace:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx
, filtered for "wmplayer.exe", of your attempt to launch the player. That
should likely point to a smoking gun.

The file might be big - if you ZIP it or upload it to your favorite file
share site (rapidshare, sendit, etc), that would be a helpful way for me to
be able to take a look.

Heck, I'd even love to take a look at an export of your HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT
registry, but that's potentially extreme overkill. Still: if it moves us
forward here, then it's time well-spent. =\

Thanks for your help here. I would love to be able to look at a system that
reproduces this issue. If you know of the steps required to get into this
state or have a box with this problem in the Seattle area, I'd love to know
about it. =\

Thanks again,
-Zach

 

[zachd [MSFT]]

I did mean HKCU - I just wanted to verify that there was nothing there.
Great, I like the settings that you mention below so far.

To quote myself from the other side of this thread:
Let's turn to the WMP side of this issue:
* What third party software is installed? I'm primarily interested in codec
packs and that sort of thing.
* When you run WMP in Admin mode, what is listed in WMP's
Help:About:Technical Support Information menu tool?

I would *love* to look at a registry trace:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx
, filtered for "wmplayer.exe", of your attempt to launch the player. That
should likely point to a smoking gun. (An unfiltered trace is fine, too, it
would just be pretty monumentally big and much more difficult.)

The file might be big - if you ZIP it or upload it to your favorite file
share site (rapidshare, sendit, etc), that would be a helpful way for me to
be able to take a look.

Heck, I'd even love to take a look at an export of your HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT
registry, but that's potentially extreme overkill. Still: if it moves us
forward here, then it's time well-spent. =\

Thanks for your help here. I would love to be able to look at a system that
reproduces this issue. If you know of the steps required to get into this
state or have a box with this problem in the Seattle area, I'd love to know
about it. =\

Thanks,
-Zach

 

[zachd [MSFT]]

As additional follow-up:
Does going through the Default Programs tool and using that to reassociate
PNGs with Photo Gallery fix up the PNG side of this issue?

 

[Elguimauk]

Hello Wez,

Your reg file corrected the PNG problem for me. Now I can see PNG file in a
non-elevated IE7 on Vista.

Thank you thank you thank you so much !

I've been waiting for such solution for more than 8 monthes !

Then again : Thank you !

Have very good day !!!!

Elguimauk

 

[JSandPC]

Well thats interesting, but...

I tried Wez's fix, but I had to modify it so that it matched my HKCR items.
Mine were a bit different. Also, Wez, there were a couple of misspellings in
your registry file (IE:
[HHKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\.png\PersistentHandler] - Notice the
HHKEY)

Lo and Behold, .png functionality returned with UAC enabled, but Internet
Explorer still did not function normally. On every website, I get the "Done,
but with errors on page" icon in the lower left corner. WMP still did not
open with UAC enabled. It didnt seem any worse though, and I think Wez may
be heading in the right direction.

Also, as an interesting note...In my case, there is no
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\MIME\. The MIME is completely missing in
Classes under Current_User. As well, HKCU only had a few entries under
Classes (only about 10 keys).

Overall functionality is poor with UAC enabled, but is perfect with with it
turned off.

I'm scratching my head for now and until someone (someone a lot smarter than
me) determines the fix, I will run with UAC disabled.

Thanks again WEZ for the post.

Jim

 

[Greg]

I too have started haaving problems with IE7 not displaying .png images on
web sites. I am logged in as the administrator and turning off UAC makes no
difference. Still the problem exists. I have asked several times for
Microsoft assistance and never receive a reply. If this isn't corrected soon
I'm moving to Firefox as my default browser.

 

[JK of Seattle]

Zach

I also associated png to Gallery per your follow-on message, reboot - no
change.

Data requests follow:

* When you run WMP in Admin mode, what is listed in WMP's
Help:About:Technical Support Information menu tool?
http://www.yourartisans.com/png/wmpsupport.htm

I would *love* to look at a registry trace:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx
, filtered for "wmplayer.exe", of your attempt to launch the player. That
should likely point to a smoking gun.
http://www.yourartisans.com/png/WMPAsAdminLogfile.zip

also

http://www.yourartisans.com/png/WMPNoAdminLogfile.zip


Heck, I'd even love to take a look at an export of your HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT
registry, but that's potentially extreme overkill. Still: if it moves us
forward here, then it's time well-spent. =\

Zipped file of HKCR reg is 101MB ! worth the trouble ?

Thanks for your help here. I would love to be able to look at a system that
reproduces this issue. If you know of the steps required to get into this
state or have a box with this problem in the Seattle area, I'd love to know
about it.

Live 25mi north

The lack of png association in IE also causes the "Stack overflow" problem
in google maps, since the maps are composed of png-s.

JK

 

[zachd [MSFT]]

Interesting, thanks - I'll take a look. Once thing I notice right off the
bat is that you have you a ton of MPEG/DVD filters - MainConcept, Pinnacle,
Roxio, and Sonic. What editing tool(s) are on this system?

Ideally you could try renaming this file set:
===
muveem2vd.ax
muveedsmpeg.ax
MPEG2VidCodec.dll
DCFilters9.dll
RoxioDVDAudio.dll
sonicdsmpeg.ax
sonicm2vd.ax
PcleAudioCodec.ax
pcleMPEGBox.ax
===
temporarily (to filename.bak or whatnot), but that's obviously a lot to ask.

I'll scan through the logs. Nothing is jumping out at me so far.

Thanks very much for this data.

-Zach

 

[Greg]

I'm just going to use Firefox from now on then I don't have to mess with
Microsoft's inability to develop a decent browser.

 

[zachd [MSFT]]

Do you have or did you have QuickTime on this system?

Does going through the Default Programs tool and using that to reassociate
PNGs with Photo Gallery fix up the PNG side of this issue?

 

[JSandPC]

Zach, I'm not sure who you were asking this question to or if it is posed to
everyone, but in my case, I did install QuickTime at one point. I'm not sure
if it was the cause or if it was around the same time I noticed the issue,
but afterwards, one of the first things I did was to re-associate .png's with
Photo Gallery. That did not clear up the issue.

Also, I posted earlier that Wez's registry fix semi-corrected the .png
issue. Actually, I did not use his registry file. I looked at the keys in
his file and found them in my Root and copied them to my HKCU. It worked,
but not very well. I could see .png's in IE, but I was still getting a
"Done, but with errors on page" on every website. Also, it had no effect on
the wmp issue, obviously. His idea, though may be heading in the right
direction because I noticed that I had no MIME key under Classes on HKCU. I
thought that was a bit strange.

Right now, I am running with UAC disabled. Everything is perfect. It's
only when I run with UAC enabled that these issues re-appear.

Thanks again Zach,

Jim

Do you have or did you have QuickTime on this system?

Does going through the Default Programs tool and using that to reassociate
PNGs with Photo Gallery fix up the PNG side of this issue?

 

[zachd [MSFT]]

Right, you should not have needed to copy those keys to HKCU. The fact that
you could not write them is probably the actual problem. That implies that
the privileges/permissions on the HKCR keys were actually what you want to
fix. Those should be broken on those keys, and should be different than
other nearby keys. You should be able to verify those fairly easily in
regedit through checking permissions. =\

--
Speaking for myself only.
See http://zachd.com/pss/pss.html for some helpful WMP info.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[JSandPC]

Thanks Zach,

I just checked permissions on those keys in HKCR and they are all exactly
the same as the adjacent image keys (.jpg, .bmp, .gif, etc). It is actually
more severe than I thought. Enabling UAC creates many other issues. Flash
Player will not run or install, Library registration errors on all pages
(including the simple google.com), a startup program is blocked and even
though I select "permit" in Win Defender, it does not permit it to run, I
can't even see anything on windowsvista.com with UAC enabled. Then there's
the WMP issue with UAC enabled.

Very frustrating.

If you google ".png uac" or "wmp uac" there are literally hundreds of sites
pointing back to this thread with comments of their own on those support
sites as well.

I'm afraid that this issue needs greater attention than just me trying to
get .png images to display in Internet Explorer. I believe this needs to be
a priority at MS, because this is not just a few users experiencing these
types of UAC issues.

So you don't think I'm soured on Vista...I like Windows Vista. It's
extremely stable, intuitive, and it looks great....but the UAC has some
flaws. The sooner that MS puts a team on this, the sooner it will be
resolved and we can all get back to work. For now, I'll run with UAC
disabled.

By the way, this frustration is not directed at you. You have been great
trying to help us all out and I appreciate your support.



Jim

 

[zachd [MSFT]]

Investigation of this issue will likely be stymied until a way to reproduce
this system on an arbitrary PC can be found. For example, it is now
possible to reproduce the "PNGs will not display in IE" issue given an
install of QuickTime. And thus the right people go off and talk to Apple
about that.

But: how do I reproduce *your* problem? What is the commonality between
your system and these other people? Getting that data turns this from
"random system corruption" into something solvable. We both want that.

Did you use some registry cleaner? What anti-spyware/anti-virus tools are
on the system? It sounds like some bad software accidentally locked down
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT too far. If you were using a tool to run a registry
monitor during the Flash Player install, that should likely show a variety
of Access Denied error messages during that install pass, I would think.

So right now I'm probably most interested in knowing what was run /
installed to the system when this started happening. Or the total set of
installed software on the system: given N systems with the same problem,
those N systems should have one or two key common aspects, and it's getting
that data set that will allow investigation to really get some place.

I love solving issues, but I've also come to realize that solving them over
the Internet can be very very challenging. For example, in the first
"Windows Media Player won't run on Vista" issue I'm aware of, it was only a
stroke of luck that I managed to get a system to debug and realized that a
bad third party was installing their own private copy of wmp.dll and thus
breaking everything badly. I don't think that's *your* issue though (unless
by chance you had installed SatelliteTVforPC 2006, which was pulled from the
market due to this issue), but -- the more data to work with here, the more
likely it is that a solution can be found.

So: what's the installed set of software on your system? =\

 

[JSandPC]

Yeah...your right, Zach, Sorry about the dramatics on the last post, but I
was a bit frustrated. I guess we have to find something common that we have
all installed. I'll try my best to list my programs and I urge others to
compare my list to theirs and please POST!

-This is a Compaq V6210US Notebook.
-OS=WVHP
-Originally came with Norton Security Center, but was uninstalled.
-Now have AVG Free Edition
-Windows Defender
-Office 2007 Pro (Previously had Off 2000 Pro)
-Windows Sidebar is running with Accuweather.com gadget and 2 other gadgets
that were an original part of Vista (Notes and Slide-show)
-Java (Latest Version)
-Macr Flash Player
-Macr Shockwave
-Bejeweled 2 Deluxe
-Microsoft Location Finder
-Live.com 3D maps
-Microsoft Sync Center (PDA Sync)
-Windows Mobile Device Center
-QuickTime
-Bullzip PDF printer (this uses something called ghostscript as well)
-Motorola Q Driver
-VZ Access Manager (Verizon Wireless)


The above programs were installed by me. I won't list the ones that came
packaged with the Compaq, because these issues did not appear out of the box.

Also, I should mention that I installed a program called BitPim, which was a
sync program that was supposed to make it easier to move my contacts back and
forth between my Phone. Didnt work, I uninstalled it and moved to Microsoft
Sync Center.

Thats really it. I'm not one for installing software everytime I hear about
a new gadget (of course, with the exception of Bejeweled 2). Thats really
the only "game" oriented software that is on here. Wouldnt it be something
if that was the culprit?

You mentioned in an earlier post what codecs I have installed. I am using
WMP in it's original form (I think) with no special codecs installed.

Thanks again,

Jim

 

[JSandPC]

Also forgot to answer your question in regards to the registry cleaner.

Never used one, probably never will.

 

[JK of Seattle]

Zach

I've added to more items per your request for review:

http://www.yourartisans.com/png/MyProgms.jpg (list of programs on pc)

http://www.yourartisans.com/png/InstalledUpdates.htm (list of updates)

BTW - around the time this was first occuring I had removed Norton A/V which
was pre-installed on machine.

JK