Help.. I'm a newbie - Page 3

WallerMan · #41 July 5th, 2002, 12:09 PM

Hi,
Can burn audio cd's just fine with adaptec installed.. But I'm not burning them on the plextor...
The problem has to be Plextor related... I will call them but I'm getting frustrated at this point. will keep you posted.

**admin** · #42 July 10th, 2002, 06:17 PM

You emailed the following to webmaster@mtu.com who never provides product support:

"This is very frustrating Bryan. Plextor support is only open during the day. I am not able to work on my Home computer until I get off work. Look, I spent $300.00 with you guys and the best y'all can do is turf me to Plextor? You guys sold me the system, now I suggest you get the answers from Plextor or else get them to help me after hours. I have done everything the way you have asked me too. The ASPI drivers are correct, the DirectX stuff is 8.1 It has to be a firmware related issue with the Plextor... I need this to work before August 1st. Otherwise I am going to box all of this up and ship it back to you..
Now how can we rectify this?"

Your problem is being handled in this Forum. Please do not email to different people at MTU. That is not the way to receive continuous support and solve your problem.

Let me start by clearly stating that we ship USB CDR drives with Microstudio every day. They work. There is nothing wrong with our product.

Having said that, we now believe that your 24x USB Plextor CDR drive is in an unknown state. Thus, as soon as you can, send the drive back to us. We will perform the Flash update and verify the drive is working. We will then ship the drive back to you. We do not take drives back, so that is not an option.

Using the original drive box packaging, and the external shipping carton, ship it to:
Micro Technology Unlimited
6900 Six Forks Road
Raleigh, NC, 27615
Voice: 919-870-0344 x204

If you have any questions about packing the drive for shipment, please call extension 203 or 204 for instructions.

Based on what you continue to report, the problem as we and Plextor's tech support can discern is that your ASPI driver is not properly installed on your Windows 98SE operating system.

If you have installed the ASPI per our directions 5 times, then your Windows installation on your computer has a problem. We have seen this before when "normal fixes" don't solve a rare problem. We have never seen your problem before.

Therefore, we believe your Windows and all application programs must be installed again. From what you say, you will need someone else to do that for you.

emwalter · #43 July 11th, 2002, 01:29 AM

RE: problem with your copying

I was just wondering if you are using the same CDG to copy from? If you are, try a different disk, some of the CDG's have corrupt tracks to foil your copy attempts. This sounds like such a situation. I have found that Sound Choice disks sometimes have problems. I also have found that a lot of the Music Maestro disks are oversize, 700Mb instead of the normal 649Mb, this will also cause a problem. I also discovered that Plexmanager will also copy CDG's, problem is, of course, you do not have the ability to burn individual tracks, but will copy the whole cd. I have also discovered that Plexmanager tends to err on the side of caution when copying and may drop to a slower speed copy. I personally don't use Plexmanager, due to some of these limitations, but you may want to try it, to verify that it CAN copy a CDG. This will at least tell you that the drive is working correctly or not. Be patient, though, it might take a while.

WallerMan · #44 July 11th, 2002, 05:10 AM

This does not satisfy me. The fact that you are complaining because I emailed your organization because I am a dis-satisfied MTU customer is quite sad from a customer service perspective. Your inability or rather your lack of wanting to support what you have sold me has definitely soured me on your company.
Also just for the record it is a USB 40X Plextor, not a 24X and This is the only problem I have with my computer so a deinstall of Windows shouldn't be the problem. I had planned on converting my Karaoke system to computer and purschasing that system fro you.
I will buy it from a competitor now as you aren't even willing to support a CDG Burner that you sold me. The Plextor should have been flashed and tested before it was shipped to me. The box had been opened by somebody as the sealed tape on the Drive box clearly showed it was opened. I thought it was opened and tested by MTU.
You know, I only wanted to get this thing working. Now I want to get this thing working and move on to another vendor that cares about it's customer base.

George · #45 July 11th, 2002, 08:34 AM

Wallerman,
Speaking from a purely objective viewpoint, I'd have to say that five pages of posts mostly from you and support trying to get at the heart of this problem certainly indicate a sincere effort on the part of MTU to solve it.. They are not magicians. There is something in your O.S. that is not communicating with the burner, and as a last ditch attempt they are asking you to send them the burner so's they can make certain that the firmware has not become corrupted. If after that was done, if the problem still exists, it's time to call in a qualified P.C.tech. MTU cannot be held responsible for the actions of your P.C., and diagnose an off the wall problem from a thousand miles away.

Admin wasn't complaining that you emailed the webmaster, he was simply advising you who is in a position to give you support, thus hoping to prevent you further aggrivation. At least that's the way I read it.

I can fully appreciate your frustration having had my p.c.
crash and be re-formatted 5 times in 5 months to finally overcome what turned out to be a hardware problem(crappy AMD processor). You have no idea what frustration is until you get into that kind of a loop, for that length of time.

Hang in there, guy, things can only get better, but lashing out at the hand that's trying to help you won't accomplish anything.

Edited by MTUSUPPORT

You'll also find if you take the time to read through the forum posts by people that have abandoned almost every other CDG program around to come over to Microstudio and Karaoke Home Producer that you'll really be spiting yourself to move on.

Take care,

George

Sincerely hope you take this post in the friendly manner in which it is intended.

emwalter · #46 July 11th, 2002, 10:32 PM

Wallerman,

I understand your frustration, completely. However, the reality is that MTU as evidenced by the emails going back and forth, is trying to help you resolve your problem. Quite frankly, they are really bending over backwards to help you. There are so many possibilities for the reason you are having problems, it could be something as simple as an old legacy driver, (left over from past installs, or from past hardware) that is causing your problem. You might even have an IRQ problem. Some cards do not like to share IRQ's, some do. You may have a sharing IRQ problem. Quite often, a complete install with fresh install with the latest drivers will solve all your problems. I ran a repair center in Phoenix, Az for a couple of years, and believe me, you find some strange things. Also, one other point I wish to make, and this is important, as a repair center, we also sold product to customers, who wanted to install themselves. These items were basically sold as is. We would exchange the product, only if WE determined there was a physical problem with the product, but only within 15 days. After that, they would have to deal with the manufacturer. My point is, if you buy to install yourself, you CANNOT hold the retail seller responsible, for your inability to use the product. You can only, really expect support beyond just a cursory suggestion on what could be the problem, if WE install it, which of course, you usually will pay an installation fee. This way, you bring the PC to us, we verify it is working correctly, and you have a recourse if you have a problem within 30 days. After that, you will need to pay additional fees for our time.

It looks like MTU is really trying above and beyond the normal call of duty to help you. To expect anthing more, is unreasonable on your part. Sorry, it sounds a bit harsh, but you must be reasonable.

Again, you will most likely have better luck by having someone who knows what they are doing, re-install your windows version and re-install the latest drivers, and your problems should disappear. If not, you have more problems than what you can expect MTU to resolve, especially for free.

One other thing, that may shed some light, I bought a Book PC (that is the brand name) and everthing worked fine, until I tried to print to my HP Deskjet, I would get a few lines to print, then it would say cannot find printer, it had a problem sending data. I discovered that the cable that came with the printer was the problem. This cable worked fine on other computers, only not on the Book PC. I happened to have another heavily sheilded and much shorter USB cable and tried that and it worked fine. Conclusion: the usb onboard chipset and the design of the Motherboard allowed too much crosstalk, and because of the speed of data being sent along the longer, less well sheilded cable, it is basically an antenna and broadcasting RF (Radio Frequenc) waves back into the PC. With the better sheilded cable and being shorter, it solved the problem. You might have a similar problem. Try finding a shorter better sheilded USB cable, before you blame the recorder.

Hope this helps to put your problem in perspective, and may provide a solution.

**admin** · #47 July 12th, 2002, 05:50 AM

Wallerman, the reason I posted you had a 24x is that is what you ordered and paid for in our accounting system. However since you have a 40x it is clear that we shipped you a superior product to meet your order when we were out of 24x stock.

Our honored clients are trying to give you guidence. However you seem to still think that we are not helping you, which is incredible with the massive support time we have invested in you.

Since you did not accept my prior offer to return the drive to MTU for us to upgrade the flash ROM, here's my last and final offer.

Send us the 40x drive back and we will give you a full refund on Microstudio and the drive. The shipping address is:

MTU
6900 Six Forks Road
Raleigh,NC 27615
Voice 919-870-0344

I trust that will be acceptable to you. You are not willing to follow our directions to resolve the problem, so my only remaining option is to end the problem. I am sorry that we could not resolve it any other way.

I wish you the best and hope you find another vendor you will be satisfied with. If you find that maybe we weren't so bad after all, you are welcome to return to MTU as a client, assuming you will then be ready to follow our directions when there is a problem.

Respectfully,

David B. Cox
President

WallerMan · #48 July 12th, 2002, 10:34 AM

David,
Understand my frustration at this point. I merely want this thing to work. I have followed all of your technical support's directions which mostly involved Checking the ASPI drivers multiple times, Checking the Direct"X" Version multiple times... And then, "well it's Plextor's problem call them". and lastly, well you need to take down your whole machine and reformat. I did everything up to the reformat the drive. That is very time consuming and I have applications and data that must be backed up before that is done. Also this seems to be a drastic step that may need to be done, but as a solution of last resort.
I did not appreciate your Tech, Bryan's attitude regarding supporting this. Frankly, in reading through many many of the posts in this forum, there have been multiple issues that were solved by your honored clients rather than by your company's technical support team. I have followed the advice of your honored clients and your limited technical support advice, and I am offended that you would take the position that I didn't.
David, I just want this thing to work and as you discourage very clearly in your product documentation handling any technical support "live" real time, this is apparently the only venue left open to try to resolve this amicably. Also if you read back through some of the latest posts you will see that apparently I am not the only client who feels your technical support teams attitude towards resolving issues is somewhat lacking. Perhaps you should take note of that . Feel free to call me to discuss this as I'm sure in your files you have my phone number.
Eric A. Osterhout

**MTUSUPPORT** · #49 July 12th, 2002, 10:52 AM

Eric,
Were you able to contact Plextor? If so can I ask what did they say when they got you to run through their diagnostics? Did they find anything out?

Do you have a Dial Up modem, DSl, or Cable modem? If you have Cable or DSL, then I could come into your computer through PC Anywhere. With this program I can see first hand everything in your system and have control over it. This might allow me to see your problem. I will need you to let me know this, but without the drive or the system in front of me, there is not much that I can try. Since I am not in front of the computer, you have to be my eyes and my hands, to follow what we have asked you to try.

I have asked you to try making an Audio CD, with another program such as Adaptec, with the Plextor drive. You stated that you did this, but not with the Plextor. Please do this with the Plextor drive and lets see if it works, if it doesn't then it sounds as if your drive could have been damaged in shipping. I need to know if this will work, and make sure it is done with the Plextor USB drive.

All the drives from MTU are opened and tested. We have never upgraded the firmware in the past. Since this problem we have chanaged our policy, so that we upgrade the firmware to the latest version when the drive is tested. We have made changes to our way of operation due to your problem. This was my suggestion, as to the time and trouble that we have had trying to fix your problem. We are taking everything into consideration trying to eliminate this from happening again. If you will ship the drive back to us, I will get it running and then make sure that it does work here then we can send it back. If it gives the same types of problems here then I can get you a working drive.

It seems that my hands are tied as to what I can and can't do, so I am doing my all, but you have to help me on you end.

WallerMan · #50 July 12th, 2002, 03:50 PM

Bryan,
Thank you. I am at my office right now so I won't be able to give much feedback from your ideas till the weekend. I appreciate the time you are giving this issue as well as the fact that this new problem has caused you to adapt your business practices as a result of this.
Believe me, this is not my idea of fun either.. I much rather would have installed this, fired it up and copied my discs by now... Okay, now I just have very slow dial-up at the house...I can probably get a copy of PC anywhere here at the office...
I will be travelling this weekend but hopefully will have some time Sunday evening..
Eric Osterhout

WallerMan · #51 July 30th, 2002, 12:17 PM

Hi,
For some reason while updating my Motherboard Firmware... I killed my puter... Now it won't power up at all...No signs of life... I am going to buy another box... My question now is... To buy the right system that will work no problem, What machine should I buy...
Pentium , celeron or AMD chipset? or does it matter?
Whats OS works best? is XP okay?Or ME?
What system will work best for this stuff.. Primarily I want this box for CDG burning and audio CD burning...
...Eric

George · #52 July 30th, 2002, 12:43 PM

Hi Eric,

Sorry for the crash,but good hearing from you again. Can't say what you should or shouldn't buy, but here's what happened to me recently. Got my p.c upgraded in January. They sold me an "all aboard" type mother board and an AMD processor. Kept having wierd problems leading to 5 formats in as many months. They kept screaming"software", so I finally went elsewhere with it, the software being no different than before the upgrade.

We Junked the 5 month old motherboard and AMD processor. Had a good motherboard installed, separate sound card, video card, and an Intel Pentium 4 processor. Bye Bye problems.

I've always believed in having some local build me one instead of buying "package deals", and have always had good luck until this experience where they used what turned out to be inferior components. May cost more, but worth it.

Just last week or so upgraded to XP, and consider it a good move.

That's the only input I have. Hope it helps.

Take care,

George

**MTUSUPPORT** · #53 July 30th, 2002, 03:28 PM

Eric,
We can build you one that will work if you would like. This way you know what it will work 100%. Please call us at 919-870-0344 Extension 201 for sales and talk to Douglas he can give you a quote on a basic computer to do all this.

jim in ohio · #54 August 14th, 2002, 01:58 PM

Eric,
Did you ever get it to work?? If so what was the problem??

Jim

WallerMan · #55 August 14th, 2002, 02:20 PM

Haven't got it to work yet.. Have not had much time to focus on the system... Plextor USB CDRW still sitting there, like an expensive paperweight... have not bought a new computer yet either... did reinstall the adaptec software so I can at least burn on my internal CDRW audio disks, as I have a wedding coming up that I need background tunes for... It works just fine... Just the external USB Plextor that doesn't work.. I am hoping to have some time in the next three weeks to and/or upgrade my OS to W2k or replace my system entirely... Looking at an HP 1.2Mhz Celeron system.... Running WINXP... hopefully that will work with the Plextor and MTU software...I'll keep you posted.... Once I get off the road, hopefully I can get a free weekend to mess with all of this...

kedmison · #56 August 14th, 2002, 03:25 PM

George,

A while back you tried helping me figure out what was wrong with my computer. Lots of crashes; freezes and the sort. It was the motherboard along with a bad CPU fan. They replaced everything at their cost! Yea!! Back up and running wonderful. Thanks for your help though. Now my question? I see where you stated that you are now using WIN XP. I am currently using 98 2nd Ed. Would I bennift by going to XP and also what changes would I have to make to allow MTU to work?

Kelly

George · #57 August 14th, 2002, 04:41 PM

Hi Kelly, glad you're sailing on smooth waters.

Went to XP mainly because my p.c. guru convinced me it was the most stable program around. I'm sure some of that was simply his preference, but since he stood to gain nothing by me changing I figured he must be sincere.

I also believe history repeats itslf and 98SE is probably doomed from the standpoint of receiving MS supoort, and a diminishing availability of software that will support it. That's probably some time down the road, so don't let that be a determining factor, but I believe it will come to pass.

I still have 98SE on my other computer and probably will for some time.

I had no problems with any of the MTU products that I have(Microstudio, KHP, Keyrite, Vogone) when I installed XP other than the fact they had to be re-installed. Right at first I didn't like the XP format until I noticed you can change many of the screens to the same format I was used to in 98SE. That's a cosmetic preference.

I'd hate to influence you in any way to change or not change. I was happy with 98SE, and elected to have both platforms available for me to test with, at least for the time being, so I only changed one p.c..

Hey, if you're happy with that horse, ride it as long as conditions determine it is still for you.

Take care,

George

**MTUSUPPORT** · #58 August 14th, 2002, 04:57 PM

George is correct. Windows XP Rocks. I am slow to migrate to the newer Operating systems, but XP is all we ship now. It blows 98 out of the water for Stability and usability.

WallerMan · #59 August 14th, 2002, 05:50 PM

Okay sounds like XP is the way to go... Any problems with Celeron chipsets with XP and MTU software with Plex drives? I may just wipe my machine and install XP... Or a I may just order a new box like that HP I'm looking at with the Celeron.... Thoughts, opinions?

T.Wright · #60 August 14th, 2002, 10:04 PM

Hi,
Dont know if this will help but
I upgraded to XP from 98, and have never regretted it.
The only advice I can offer as far as XP goes is before you upgrade.

1. Make sure all your hardware will work under XP,
( Printer / Scanner / Modem ) You can find out on the net. I had to get a new Modem and scanner. ( they were quite old as far as computer equipment goes any way)

2. Also check that all your existing programs will upgrade to XP.
Some might not.

One of the best things I have found most usefull is the reset Point.
If everything is working well with your computer you can add a reset point which stores all settings and data at that point,
( always best to do this if your loading a new program ) then if you have any problems after that you can go back to the reset point and your computer will start again from that point with no problems and remove anything added after the reset point.
(Very handy if your beta testing.)
Hope this helps.

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