Sony Walkman - SonicStage Software Disabled My DVDR Drive

[Guest]

I bought a Sony Walkman UWB MP3 player today. As a piece of hardware its
good, but the supplied SonicStage Version 4.3 software completely killed my
Pioneer DVDR drive - which disappeared from the Explorer window. It was
still visible in Device Manager, but with a yellow exclamation mark and a
"driver unable to start" error message.
I wasn't able to recover by deleting the Sony software - and in the end had
to restore an Acronis disk image of my C drive to get normality again.

Two questions:

a. Is alternative software able to access the Walkman available? I can see
the device as a "disk drive" in Windows explorer, but Sony warns that simply
copying files across using Explorer won't work. Are there any workarounds?

b. Failing that, and ideas how to get the DVDR drive working with the
software installed. I tried searching using the "update drivers" dialogue,
without success. I'm reluctant to let the Sony Software loose again (or try
it on my laptop) unless a sensible recovery route is available.

Any hints or tips would be appreciated.

Bob,

 

[Cal Bear '66]

Try this for your DVD drive (same for Vista):

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/314060

 

[Paul Smith]

a. Is alternative software able to access the Walkman available? I can see
the device as a "disk drive" in Windows explorer, but Sony warns that
simply
copying files across using Explorer won't work. Are there any workarounds?

Does the device show up in Windows Media Player?

b. Failing that, and ideas how to get the DVDR drive working with the
software installed. I tried searching using the "update drivers" dialogue,
without success. I'm reluctant to let the Sony Software loose again (or
try
it on my laptop) unless a sensible recovery route is available.

Possibly. It sounds like something that I've run across a couple of times
before, which the following article may apply to
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314060/en-us (although its for Windows XP,
the steps to resolve it are the same for Windows Vista).

--
Paul Smith,
Yeovil, UK.
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User.
http://www.dasmirnov.net/blog/
http://www.windowsresource.net/

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[Guest]

Thanks for replies.

I restored the disk image so don't need to try these fixes until I try and
install the Sony software again. I'll try it first on my Vista laptop, and if
that works I won't need to use my desktop PC for this purpose. If it works on
the laptop, I'll settle for that.

Bob,

PS - Surprised that it happened. Thought Vista was supposed to have high
in-built security to stop drivers and programs conflicting in this manner.

 

[Paul Smith]

PS - Surprised that it happened. Thought Vista was supposed to have high
in-built security to stop drivers and programs conflicting in this manner.

The second something is elevated to an administrator it has the potential to
take out the system.

There are times I'd like to see known bad applications (not just malware)
blocked by Microsoft using Defender or the like, but it'll never happen as
they'd find themselves in court at a rate of knots. But 3rd party apps are
in my experience the primary cause of weirdness on a system.

--
Paul Smith,
Yeovil, UK.
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User.
http://www.dasmirnov.net/blog/
http://www.windowsresource.net/

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