Hoster Demo
 

i tried the demo on my test pc and on one of my laptops, on my pc i have 2 ext. cd/dvd drives, and my int. drive 2 of them tested bad ( int. and 1 ext) and the other one was good, did a retest same result,so i tried to import a song from the good drive ( test disc PHM0702-P) and i had to cancell after 5 minutes of trying to import the song ( progress bar barely moved ) removed and re-installed the demo still the same result. tried it on my laptop ,my int cd/dvd drive tested good , but still the same importing problem, opened my microstudio on my test pc, imported the disc and i was able to import the whole disc in less than 5 minutes..

Was this the 4.08 demo? If so, there seems to be a small issue with this one. If you had access to 3.4 on this machine, you could test and set the drives there, then just cancel when 4.08 asks. This is a work-around until MTU figures out a better way.

yes, this is the 4.08 demo, i dont have the 3.4, on this machine, i always try the demo first before i upgrade, my show and back-up laptops has the 4.06 & 3.4 and i dont have problems with the drives..

That's what I'm saying. It's unique to 4.08. If the drives work in 4.06 they will work in 4.08 full version with this work around.

I would bet that a registry change would fix it, but I'm not going to council anyone to do that.

when i downloaded the demo i had a popped up about the registry changed and something like "hoster is trying to changed registry" and the small box always allowed is checked..so i clicked on ok..

That's what I'm saying. We now know that if you had hit cancel, it would have continued working.

really., now i know, it's just when i saw that little box with that marked " always allowed " i thought it's safe and i thought it's a part of hoster w/o it hoster won't run..but anyway so if i download the demo again and that popped up shows up , should i click on " don't allow "?

You guys are talking apples and oranges. Billy what you saw when downloaded/installed the Demo is coming from outside of Hoster. Do you have Spybot or something like that loaded on that computer? That would be the source of the message you saw pop up. It is a protection to keep anything from changing the registry without you knowing that it is happening. You did right by marking it as "always allow" and letting Hoster do it.
What Mark is talking about is when you open Hoster it pops-up the CD\DVD drive dialog. Drives that were showing as good in 4.06 are now showing up as bad for some people. Instead of retesting and trying to get them to show good, just hit the cancel. Then try importing from one of the two drives that show as Bad and it should work even though it is marked bad that is if they were good in 4.06.
Another work around is if 3.4 is on the computer (which is still included with 4.08) then you can open it (with 4.08 closed) and run the Detect Again from it's Default Drive tool and after they show Good closed 3.4 and open 4.08 and they should show good there as well. That was how I fixed one of my computers.
The 4.08 bug is that the Registry entries for the drive state (good or bad) isn't being set by Hoster but the drives will work anyway. The bother is most people with this bug have all their drives being marked as bad, so they see the drive dialog pop up every time they open Hoster. Since one of your drives show as Good, then you won't see it pop up at that time.

thanks for the explanation, i'll download the demo again..thanks

dale, i downloaded the demo again and i did your suggestion, unable to cancell unless i click on the retest button, did the cancell and only one drive showed good ( colored green ), opened hoster tried to import same disc, on the good drive error msg. "cd/dvd drive not ready" so i re insert the disc,on the other drive, the progress bar did not even moved, and my cd/dvd drive did not even light up, so i tried the first drive another error, "program not responding"..so did it over and same result..progress bar didnt moved, no light on both drives..does 3.4 included on the 4.08 demo, caused i cant find it, remember now this is my test pc i dont have hoster loaded in it, just MS..

I don't know if 3.4 is included with the Demo. If it is there it will be in C:\Program Files\Micro Technology Unlimited\Hoster. The file name is Hoster34.exe.
Did 4.06 say all of these drives were good? Or have you not tested them with 4.06?
Did you reboot after installing?
Even if you have to retest, when you hit cancel afterwards it will not save any changes.
This has worked for everyone so far, but none of them were using the Demo. Maybe the disc you are using is bad, since it wouldn't work on either computer?

yes.i re-booted and yes 4.06 says these drives are good..everytime there's an upgrade, i always try the demo first and never had problems with my drivers except for the 4.08 demo, i have ms loaded on this pc and when i upgraded to the latest version, my int. cd/dvd drive quit reading/writing cdg's which is not a big deal since i have 2 more ext. cd/dvd drives hooked-up...i'm not sure if its the disc since when i imported the same cd on the same drive(s) using ms it imported w/o a hitched..but i'll try another disc..thanks

You say 4.06 says the drives are all good, but have you used all of them to import from in 4.06. I have seen others report a drive says it is good, but when they tried to import with them they wouldn't work.
Is this XP or Vista and if it is XP are you using SP3 or SP2?

yes, i have used all of them ( except for the int. ) and never had a problem, as a matter of fact i actually have 3 cd/dvd drives i forgot about the plextor dr ( i forgot to turn the power on :)).it's an xp using sp2 , just put in a cloned 500g hhd pent. 4 cpu 2.80 hgz 2.79 hgz 2.24g of memory ( don't want to update to sp3 due to previous problem )

Billy I think this is why your having a totally different result. I had a Plextor drive that suddenly stopped working. As I have updated through SP3 and several updates beyond it suddenly started working right again. This was right after doing one set of updates. I don't know which one did it but something definately fixed whatever was wrong from before.
I really think you need to figure out why you had that problem with SP3 (check with the MFG of the computer) and get them up to date.

i really wanted to update to sp3, and i also read on how to load sp3, it's just too many steps to follow just to load the sp3 which is actually from what i read and heard from other people thats sp3 is actually just a sec. update, my show and back-up laptops has sp2 and hoster 4.06 and i never encountered any of the problems other people had..i may have to stick with the 4.06 for now, and i also like that i am able to see the video on both the preview and the singers screen when playing vcd..on which 4.08 has removed..my mini laptop has sp3, but i only used that ( mini ) for djing..

Microsoft never puts out just a security update. There are always changes included that effect other things in the operating system. Case in point is my Plextor drive. SP3 is a cumulation of all updates from SP2 plus a few more that were new at the time. And there have been many more since then.
If you are going to stick to 4.06 just for the VCD in the preview I hope you don't experience the shutdowns and crashes that happen when you use the "New" display. Also make sure you don't enter more than one screens worth of songs for any one singer in the Singers Database so you won't have the refresh problem. Or for that matter any of the other 40+ items fixed by 4.08.

thanks for the adviced, taking it seriously, i just dont wanna have that blue screen again..but anyway, like i said never had problem with the 4.06..,( i guessed i'm one of the lucky one's,) but anyway i never really used a lot of the features on 4.06 except for the marquee, i never stored any on my singers database, i just plainly searched ,add and play..( simple ) i bought hoster just for karaoke, if i have to dj i used other programs.i read all the fixes that 4.08 has corrected and as far as i know i didnt have those problems..but anyway thanks for the adviced, and maybe if i get ambitious enough, i'll try to get those sp3 how to's and upgrade to 4.08, like someone said " if it aint broke, don't fix it..