Archive for July 2009
My Lost CD Drive
[January 2010 Update: This problem has been fixed with an update from iTunes 8 to iTunes 9, and by manually removing both the 32-bit and 64-bit Gear drivers.]
The newest development in my trip along this road to digital nirvana is that Apple has screwed it all up with iTunes 8 for Windows.
There is a bug that kills your computer’s CD drive when iTunes 8 is loaded. I get a kick out of those funny-ha-ha Apple ads criticizing PCs for regular crashes, when in this case it is Apple and their inability to write and test PC software that are at fault.
This is all very silly because there are a lot more copies of iTunes running on PCs, than there will ever be copies of iTunes running on Macs.
There are lots and lots of exchanges on various tech support message boards about whose fault it is: Apple’s, Gear Software’s, or Microsoft’s, and this has been going for almost a year. While these three companies, their fans, and tech support teams are busy pointing their fingers at each other, their customers are left without either a usable CD drive, or at minimum, not being able to burn a CD from iTunes.
My version of the problem came when I upgraded from an OEM version of Vista x64 Home Premium to a full retail version of Vista x64 Ultimate.
After the upgrade I reinstalled iTunes, at which time the DVD/CD drive disappeared. Like several others in many other threads on many tech sites, I thought it was a DVD/CD drive problem. More research narrowed it down to an iTunes 8 problem, and the way that Apple chooses to implement the GEARAspiWDM driver furnished by Gear Software.
After spending several hours tweaking, deleting, and reinstalling, I decided to live without burning CDs in iTunes. I had reinstalled iTunes too many times to count, but as a last-ditch effort, decided to try their “Run diagnostics” routine. I found that iTunes thinks I am not an administrator, which is wrong. So for convenience, I created a new desktop/start menu shortcut to “Run as administrator” and which points directly to the itunes.exe file, which neither the Desktop or Start Menu icons created by Apple are able to do.
Running iTunes as an administrator seems to have fixed the problem. Several reboots and checks for a disappearing CD drive confirms this, as long as I use the new “Run as administrator” shortcut. I have to “allow” in UAC, and iTunes says I am running it in compatibility mode for an older version of Windows, which I am not. But iTunes is working, the CD drive is showing, and I am able to burn CDs in iTunes and in all the other programs. This crappy software “update” from Apple is making MediaMonkey look better every day.
My Audio Life
It all started with my brother’s return from his Viet Nam experience in 1969 with a reel-to-reel tape recorder. Along with the reel-to-reel recorder, the setup included an amp and a couple big-bass floor-speakers. We spent time recording our (mostly his) vinyl collection, recording songs from the radio, and listening to music. Loud music, mostly surf music, such as The Ventures and other guitars-and-drums groups of the 1960s.
I bought my own setup within the year which included a Pioneer amp, a Garrard turntable, a Sony cassette player that auto-reversed (cool stuff in those days), and two big Pioneer speakers that are, almost 40 years later, still mounted up high on my walls.
Music has remained a part of my life ever since, through all the various moves and upgrades. Components have come and gone, and the current component setup uses those same big Pioneer speakers, plus a couple great sounding book shelf speakers at the other end of the room, and a AIWA combination CD/cassette player, together with what was literally hundreds of CDs and vinyl albums. That was until I purchased my first iPod in late 2005, which forced me to rethink of my audio life, with my computer becoming the focal point.
I soon began loading the vinyl albums and CDs into iTunes, and scanning my own album art. Within a short period I filled the 30GB iPod. A concurrent review of the vinyl and CD collection revealed several that were not really keepers, and several that were one-trick ponies with a single song being the reason for the original purchase. While keeping a realistic collection of vinyl and CDs, a local used-CD store bought the rest at a fair price, and I walked out with enough cash to buy a new 80GB iPod, which as I write this, is still only half filled with over 6000 songs.
Until it died, the iMac had been kept just for the tunes, connected to a set of Bose Companion 5 speakers. The combination of iTunes and the Bose speakers, along with the iMac (now replaced by the Dell PC) is essentially a great stereo, with edit capability, with more music readily available from several on-line sources including iTunes, Amazon, Jamendo, Last.fm, or whatever else strikes my fancy.
I can still crank up the volume and feel the music. The sound is so great that I haven’t had my four-speaker component stereo even powered-on for over a year. And I can pick and choose the songs I want on iTunes, by artist, by album, by date added, by least played, by title, or completely random.
I use iTunes, but to be fair, a couple days ago I tried Zune, having noticed the recommendation given it by the newest Maximum PC magazine. It took Zune well over two hours to import the 6500 songs in the music collection, and after trying to use it to play particular songs, I think I’ll stay with iTunes. I don’t much care for Zune’s look and feel. I have also tried using Windows Media Player, and MediaMonkey (which I like a lot).
The recent iTunes 8 for Windows update is giving me pause about continued use of Apple’s product, and replacing it with MediaMonkey. I only need to figure out how to keep using my iPod as the portable player. With the silliness of Windows Media Player’s whole “folder.jpg” and “AlbumSmallArt.jpg” thing, versus embedding the album art as part of the MP3 files, I know that I’m staying as far away from Windows Media Player as possible.
