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Decoding Creative's Drivers

The Maximum PC Staff — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 12:21:57 -0500

I used to be able to connect my Xbox 360 to my Audigy Platinum and have it decode the 5.1 signal. However, in my new X-Fi Platinum Fatal1ty Champion soundcard, it looks like Creative disabled this feature in the drivers. Is there any way around this to get my computer to decode 5.1? This feature was supposed to be one of the card’s selling points.

—Curtis Leong

Creative Labs said the loss of the feature was not intentional at all. A spokesperson explained, “It has come to our attention that, in the process of upgrading from Windows XP to Vista and installing driver updates for certain Creative soundcards, Dolby Digital and DTS decoding functionality may have been impacted for some customers. Creative has now created separate drivers that are specifically designed to re-establish these functionalities.

There are two revised versions of the drivers, one for Audigy and one for X-Fi products. For Audigy products, the new driver addresses DVD audio functionality for products in which it existed before the Windows Vista upgrade (on Vista 32-bit versions only). The new Audigy driver also addresses compatibility issues for 64-bit systems that have 4GB or greater amounts of memory. Both new drivers require Windows Vista SP1. The beta version of these drivers was made available during the week of May 12. The final release version of these drivers will be made available in late July or early August.” 

EMAIL THE WATCHDOG If you feel you’ve gotten a raw deal and need assistance setting a vendor straight, email the Dog at watchdog@maximumpc.com. Please include a detailed explanation of your problem as well as any correspondence you have sent concerning the issue.

15 - 37 = 42

The Maximum PC Staff — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 14:00:00 -0500

I purchased a 37-inch Westinghouse LVM-37W3SE LCD 1080p HDTV monitor in June 2007. A few months later, I found out that this particular model has faulty firmware that prevents it from working properly with many devices. For example, the Nvidia driver recognizes it as a different model Westinghouse 1080i monitor and refuses to set it in 1080p mode. I contacted customer support and received permission to return it. The monitor was returned in November, and it was received by Westinghouse two days later. I hadn’t heard anything from them until about a month ago, when I finally made a call to find out about the RMA status. (I’ve been out of the country on a business trip.)

I was promised a follow-up by several people, but no one would commit to when the monitor would be sent. They basically asked me to wait until I received my product. It has now been more than seven months, and I believe I have waited long enough! Thank God my trusty 15-inch LCD is still working fine.

—Jeong Lee

The Dog contacted a Westinghouse spokesperson who said the delay is due to the limited availability of parts for the 37-inch panel. “Westinghouse Digital apologizes for the delay and is working to update any delays in its process,” the spokesman said. To compensate Jeong for the lengthy wait, Westinghouse Digital said it would provide him with a new 42-inch 1080p LVM-42W2.

What's Next, Opus Office?

The Maximum PC Staff — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 09:00:00 -0500

I ran across a site that’s selling something called Opal Office. The site, OfficeBestDeal.com, says the suite is compatible with Microsoft Office, but in reality it’s just OpenOffice! You can find that out when you open the program and it says on the first line of text, “OpenOffice.” Apparently, they’re charging $11.95 for it. Is this even legal?

— Marion Randall

The Dog contacted OfficeBestDeal to see if the app was truly different from the free OpenOffice suite and, if so, request a copy of the source code, which the GPL license requires. A spokesman for the company named Russ responded: “According to the GPL license, we can sell OpenOffice and call it whatever name we want. We have all agreements with the OpenOffice community management team. You can find the source code at www.openoffice.org.”

At least they’re being honest about it. In other words, Opal Office is no different than OpenOffice, but you pay for the download. This sounded pretty hinky, so the Dog spoke with Andrew Jensen, who runs one of the user communities for OpenOffice.org. Jensen said this situation is not unheard of. Many companies take OpenOffice and sell it.

Opal Office is just OpenOffice with a slightly different name.

“Legally, they have the right to do it, but it bothers many people in the user community,” Jensen said. Still, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Jensen said some companies that sell the product on CD actually provide a valuable resource for people who are still operating on dialup or without Internet access (provided the price is reasonable). Other vendors offer support for OpenOffice, which has some value. But many, Jensen said, simply provide a link to the OpenOffice servers and point customers to the community forums for troubleshooting.

It’s not clear what level of support OfficeBestDeal offers on the download version, but it does make a CD version available for $16.90—which sounds terribly overpriced given the cost of a CD today. The Dog looked online and found the same version of OpenOffice on disc for as low as $2.95 on eBay.

So, Marion, what OfficeBestDeal is doing is legal but probably not honorable, if you ask the Dog. If the idea is simply to provide users with a copy of OpenOffice, why change the name?

Registry Cleaning

The Maximum PC Staff — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 16:51:33 -0500

The Dog asked readers for their feedback regarding registry cleaners, and more specifically, RegCure, which the Dog took a hard look at in the July issue. The upshot? The handful of readers who use RegCure reported no serious issues with the application, but only one person felt that it actually improved system performance. While others thought that registry cleaners in general have nominal value as performance enhancers, some saw other reasons to use them.

Reader Eric Pullen says, “From a software/device-driver testing perspective, CCleaner has done a pretty good job of removing remnants of keys left behind by subpar software and device driver uninstallers. So CCleaner can act as a testing shortcut in certain cases, if you don’t have the time or feel the need to reload an entire clean OS image. CCleaner’s registry tool also works as a quick spyware checker. I had a case in which Windows Defender kept finding a malware program every so many days after deleting it, and I was able to track down the specific DLL file that was the culprit because CCleaner showed the orphan registry entry that remained after Windows Defender said it “removed” the threat. It was this registry entry that kept re-installing the malware from the suspect DLL file after a PC reboot.”

Almost Everything In Wonder

The Maximum PC Staff — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:29:45 -0500

This one is a little complicated, but here’s what happened: My girlfriend bought an AMD All-in-Wonder 7500 AGP card from Provantage.com for her father, but it arrived without a remote. He thought the description on the website indicated a remote would come with it, so he asked me to take a look at the website. I thought the product description was ambiguous, so I pinged Provantage about the remote and whether it was OEM or retail packaged.

To make a long story short, a customer service rep told me it did come with a remote and that it was retail boxed. The package my girlfriend’s father received was OEM and came with a driver disc and card—no remote. My girlfriend’s father didn’t want to bother with trying to fight for a return or the remote, so I left it at that. But I think it’s wrong for a company to tell you a product comes with something and then not include it. Provantage.com is definitely not a company I would recommend to anyone who works hard for his or her money.

—Zachary Cothran

The Dog spoke with a Provantage spokesperson who said, “We did accidentally provide erroneous information to the customer, which happens on occasion. We process thousands of orders per day, and we cannot hit a home run every time, although we give our best effort to do so. Had the customer been dissatisfied with what was received and we were notified that they were shipped the wrong product, we would have gladly made it right. Unfortunately, we were not contacted, but Maximum PC’s Watchdog was. Provantage has been around since 1984 and one thing will never change: Customer mistakes happen. We do our best to correct any errors, but if we do not know they happen, there is nothing we can do to make it right.”

The spokesperson said a contributing factor to the confusion may have come from the fact that Zach’s girlfriend ordered the part under her name and Zachary made the inquiry separately, so customer service would never have connected the two.

He also said that the customer service reps aren’t near the products, so they can’t check what’s in the box. The spokesperson said that if Zach’s girlfriend wanted the version with the remote, she could return the card and purchase a retail-packaged one, which includes a remote.

How Can You Measure, Measure a Year?

The Maximum PC Staff — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 16:29:49 -0500

I was a victim of the Symantec triple-license AV software whose timer started ticking with the first installation (March 2008). I called Symantec’s customer service number and complained, and the company fixed it for me by resetting the timer to start with the third installation. This rectified the situation to my satisfaction, and I learned a lesson.

Fast forward a year to a similar three-pack from Computer Associates. Being careful, I installed all three licenses on the same day to make sure there wouldn’t be any issues with the expiration date. As soon as the software ran an update cycle with the home server, it took three weeks off my license! I called CA and the company fixed the problem. The culprit? It seems the clock started ticking when I bought the package (or so I was told). But how did they know when I bought it?

Customer service didn’t say, but I bet it’s from the rebate form I sent in after buying the software. I had purchased the software locally prior to the expiration date of the current antivirus software on the systems I was using and waited a few weeks until the current licenses expired before installing the new copy—a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

This strikes me as an extremely deceptive practice. I wonder if anyone else has been bitten by this?

—Louis Lung

The Dog spoke with a rep from Computer Associates who explained, “With the purchase of a boxed product from a store, the installation process starts when you install the product (not when you purchase it). As the customer states, there is no way for us to know when he purchased it if he bought it in a store.” The spokesperson said this doesn’t apply to all versions though—for software downloaded directly from the website, the clock starts on the purchase date. Louis said he purchased the three-pack locally, so that’s not what occurred. “The update process should not take away any time from his subscription. And submitting a rebate would definitely not alter his subscription date either,” the rep explained.

The spokesperson said the company has not received reports of this happening to other customers. “We try to be as transparent as possible in all of our practices and by no means would we intentionally do anything that was duplicitous.

Fortunately, our customer service resolved this issue directly with the customer, but we do want to make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else.”

Since some details of what exactly happened in Louis’s case aren’t clear, the rep offered to contact him to try to discover what could have happened.

The lesson to be learned from this is that you need to track your subscriptions— don’t assume companies will do it for you.

Hard Drives and Taxes

The Maximum PC Staff — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 14:34:29 -0500

In your May 2008 issue, you made warm comments about HD Inspector from AltrixSoft. However, the trial version is not really fully featured, as you said, since you can check only the primary drive. All other drives are blocked. Also, these guys charge sales tax on downloaded software. No physical product is delivered, and there’s no way to complain about this. The real issue is the sales tax. This amounts to a 5 to 8 percent surcharge on the price of the product. I live in Boulder, CO. I highly doubt that the company is licensed to collect sales tax in Boulder, or in any other small town in America. This is fraud, and you should look a bit deeper before recommending some of these software vendors.

—Tom Wade

The Dog pinged AltrixSoft, who pinged SWREG, the vendor that processes its software purchases. A SWREG spokesperson said, “The tax we charge is based on our company location and tax requirements. By law, in the U.S., we are required to collect sales tax. We do collect this and pay it to the state. We have offices in Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska, Minneapolis, and Utah and are required to add sales tax to orders from residents in those states.”

Residents of some states will have to pay sales tax
when they purchase Hard Drive Inspector Professional online.

So, while Boulder is a lovely place to live, apparently residents will always have to pay sales tax on orders from SWREG. If you’re wondering why you didn’t pay sales tax on, say, a copy of Adobe Photoshop CS3 or Symantec Norton Antivirus that you downloaded—not all states require companies to charge sales tax on software downloads.

Among those that don’t are California, Nevada, Oregon, Florida, Ohio, New York, and Virginia. Colorado and several others require sales tax on downloaded software. As far as the “fully featured” comment, the Dog was not aware that HD Inspector works with only the primary drive, as the machine he tested it on did show the secondary drive. The primary drive, a SAS drive, did not show up when he used HD Inspector though.

Is RegCure Legit?

The Maximum PC Staff — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 17:27:23 -0500

Is RegCure a Wonder Cure?

I recently downloaded RegCure software, but I have to buy the full version of the app for a complete system repair. Is RegCure.com a reputable company?

—Ted Keenan

That’s a good question, Ted, as a few things about RegCure.com certainly seem suspicious, including a slick-looking website with no phone number in sight and a product that’s being pimped all over the Internet by websites that some would regard as shady. Despite that, RegCure and the maker of the software, ParetoLogic, are real. The company employs 110 people and is a member of the Software Information Industry Association.

RegCure was reviewed and recommended by Financial Times tech writer Paul Taylor, who said he preferred the software over Registry Mechanic 5.2 because “…it has additional features, including the ability to manage the programs that launch when Windows fires up.”

The Vancouver Island branch of the Better Business Bureau also gives ParetoLogic a thumbs up and notes that the company has been in business since 2004 and is an accredited BBB member. The BBB says that although the company has logged 47 complaints within the last three years (with 26 of those coming in the last 12 months), the company has satisfactorily addressed all of the issues. If it didn’t, the company wouldn’t be accredited by the BBB.

So everything’s fine, right? The Dog isn’t sure. A search for user experiences on the Internet reveals some pretty pissed-off customers. At Complaintsboard.com, the overwhelming opinion is that RegCure has a tendency to break things rather than fix them, with many people reporting that they had to perform a system restore to get their machines working after using the software. RegCure itself claims to fix corruption problems with registry keys and classes, remove invalid DLL entries, and clear empty registry keys. It also says that it fixes program shortcuts, lets you manage Windows startup items, and backs up the registry for you.

The Dog decided to give RegCure a spin, so he installed it on a clean copy of Windows XP Professional with the newly released Service Pack 3 integrated. The version was newly created in Virtual PC 2007. Could there possibly be problems with a clean install of XP? According to RegCure, yes. The software found 335 problems related to COM/ActiveX entries, application paths, and file/path references, and 199 empty registry keys. Curious to see if another registry repair utility would find as many problems, the Dog reverted to the original install and gave the freeware Crap Cleaner a spin. Although more of a decrufter, Crap Cleaner also features a registry scanner. On the clean install, Crap Cleaner found 12 problems and, of course, offered to fix them for free.

RegCure reported problems with a completely new install of Windows XP.

Thinking the issue might possibly be with Service Pack 3, the Dog created a new virtual machine using a Windows XP CD provided by Microsoft. The disc holds the original 2001 version of XP Pro and does not feature any patches or service packs and is limited to the native driver support that XP uses. Crap Cleaner again found 12 issues with the original XP. RegCure found 318. So you do have to wonder what exactly the program is finding.

The Dog asked ParetoLogic about the complaints and problems that RegCure found. “RegCure is a logic-based program that looks for specific registry inconsistencies. Each check box applies a different type of logic to identify issues. Without seeing the results of your scan, our best guess is that the majority of the results are related to empty registry keys. Since the registry is just a database and a program can use it in any fashion it chooses, occasionally our logic detects false positives. We do have a whitelist to mitigate and avoid such issues, and we regularly update it to include any false positives that we have found,” said Amanda Cooper, a spokeswoman for ParetoLogic. She said the company is waiting for SP3 to be released before doing a full round of tests with it. Cooper said she understands the Dog’s concerns regarding the large number of negative comments and said the company has been going to forums to answer questions and offer support if required.

“I regret the frustration and difficulties that consumers experience with their registries, and while I respect the feedback in online posts about registry cleaners in general and RegCure in particular, I am fortunate to see all the testimonials that come in daily from our customers, so I do know that it is a product that computer users are finding effective and useful,” Cooper said

What’s the Dog’s take? At this point, the Dog isn’t convinced that any registry cleaners actually work, as he has never known them to actually improve performance. This isn’t just RegCure, but registry scanners going back through the years. Though some of the marketing for RegCure may be questionable, ParetoLogic is certainly real. What’s your take? The Dog would like to hear. Woof.