www.makemkv.com

Hi guys,
I just updated to 1.7.0, opened it and left open doing nothing.
Due to the fact I like I was going to buy it.
Then, just the time to open MakeMKV site all PC crashed.
No error codes, no blue screen, just everything freezed all PC (neither ctrl-alt-del worked).
I've never seen a crash like this.
The only option I had was an hard reset.
Then, I ran for a god sake a Checkdisk, a Registry repair, but still the same.
I deinstalled 1.7.0 and reistalled the older 1.6.16 but the crash just opening the software still remains.

I am very pissed off, because even if the software is good and I was going to buy it, it destroyed some part in the OS, and only God knows what this shitty piece of trojan destroyed on my PC.
Shame on you guys, now to be safe from your bad software, I need to format and reinstall OS and programs from the scratch. Thanks, three days wasted.

What you describe is that some application "ate" all available memory. Normally what you do, you start a task manager (and it may take 15 minutes to start), look what app is behaving badly and kill it. It is very unlikely that MakeMKV was an offending application in this case - it could be, but I can't see how that may happen, especially if MakeMKV is just running idle.

Dear Mike,
believe me, I work withi PCs since 8088 CPU, it was here in Italy nearly the '90.
To give you a picture as clean as possible, my pc is a DELL 755 Core 2 Duo, chipset Intel E8400 @ 3.00GHz.
The RAM is a fast 2 GB installed from Dell. The cache is 3.0 GB.
The cache as been cleaned (deleted, restert, create a new cache).
I never had any kink of problem with this machine, it is rock stable.
I am behind a Cisco firewall and personally check for any process, file or registry entry every week, over the antivirus work.
I tried to restore, even the registry snapshot I take every week, when this junk behaviour modified something in my OS (Win XP SP3).

BTW, when I received your answer, I again tried to run the application and, still the same.
It starts, write a few lines looking for the DVD player and eventually any DVD inserted.
At that point everithin was frozen.
Moreover, upon your suggestion, I pressed CTRL-ALT-DEL to invoke the Task Manager.
Nothing happened after one hour. Again CTRL-ALT-DEL and left PC all the night on.
This morning it was still frozen.

Then, pls consider my opinion. Due to the fact it happens only with MakeMKV, I do not care what kind of underground process it starts to being able to let be able to freeze in such a way the PC. The fact is that MakeMKV makes this happens.
I am open to a remote control from your company, just tell me how do you want to do it and how many hours of difference you have from Italy.
It's really a pain, it was a good software when I used the previous betas (it's the only that merge the forced subs and I can see them on my multimedia player). I do wanto to buy it and the same fiends of mine, but scared about what MakeMKV can do on your OS.
Cheers.

mike admin wrote:What you describe is that some application "ate" all available memory. Normally what you do, you start a task manager (and it may take 15 minutes to start), look what app is behaving badly and kill it. It is very unlikely that MakeMKV was an offending application in this case - it could be, but I can't see how that may happen, especially if MakeMKV is just running idle.

tanzpunz wrote: Then, pls consider my opinion. Due to the fact it happens only with MakeMKV, I do not care what kind of underground process it starts to being able to let be able to freeze in such a way the PC. The fact is that MakeMKV makes this happens.

This sounds very strange and I'm really sorry to hear that. Please try the following:
- Launch MakeMKV, go to preferences, on IO tab change "read buffer size" from "Auto" to "256 MB". Close MakeMKV.
- start task manager
- start cmd.exe , navigate to folder where MakeMKV is installed.
- with disc inserted, type "makemkvcon info disc:0"

If you see that the system starts hanging again, quickly kill makemkvcon.exe from a task manager. If the command succeeds, please try running MakeMKV and see if it still causes the system to hang, again please use already opened task manager to kill makemkvcon.exe . Please do this and I'll provide additional troubleshooting instructions.

Thank you very much for doing this.

Sorry for the delay in my answer but I've been very busy.

Answers for you:
1- the freeze happens in such a deep part of the OS (probably the blue layer) because, even with the task manager opened, no other sw running, opening MakeMKV, nothing is working anymore. I mean mouse freezed, alt-tab cannot switch to task manager. Nothing working on the OS.

2- after some attempting to change the preferences as suggested by you, because the freezing took very few seconds to arise, I've been able to change the buffer to 256 and in cmd make the other parameter change.

3- the good news is that now it seems to stay open and working.
The BAD news is that now I cannot use and finish my trial period.
When I open a BRD or a folder containing a cloned BRD, it opens an "happy" windows saying:
"MAKEMKV BETA POPUP
Evaluation period has expired. Please purchase an activation key if you've found this application usefull. You may still use all free functionality without any restriction."

So, now it opens, I lost my month of evaluation and there is NOT any "free functionality" enabled.
Yet, sincerely, the cost of 50,00 Euros for a beta version of a sw that made my OS behaving crazy is really too much.
Is any way to put a key that re-enable the evaluation period?
Cheers,
Alberto

tanzpunz wrote:Sorry for the delay in my answer but I've been very busy.

Answers for you:
1- the freeze happens in such a deep part of the OS (probably the blue layer) because, even with the task manager opened, no other sw running, opening MakeMKV, nothing is working anymore. I mean mouse freezed, alt-tab cannot switch to task manager. Nothing working on the OS.

2- after some attempting to change the preferences as suggested by you, because the freezing took very few seconds to arise, I've been able to change the buffer to 256 and in cmd make the other parameter change.

3- the good news is that now it seems to stay open and working.
The BAD news is that now I cannot use and finish my trial period.
When I open a BRD or a folder containing a cloned BRD, it opens an "happy" windows saying:
"MAKEMKV BETA POPUP
Evaluation period has expired. Please purchase an activation key if you've found this application usefull. You may still use all free functionality without any restriction."

So, now it opens, I lost my month of evaluation and there is NOT any "free functionality" enabled.
Yet, sincerely, the cost of 50,00 Euros for a beta version of a sw that made my OS behaving crazy is really too much.
Is any way to put a key that re-enable the evaluation period?
Cheers,
Alberto

There is a beta key that allows full functionality but needs to be updated periodically:

http://www.makemkv.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1053

tanzpunz wrote: 2- after some attempting to change the preferences as suggested by you, because the freezing took very few seconds to arise, I've been able to change the buffer to 256 and in cmd make the other parameter change.

3- the good news is that now it seems to stay open and working.

So that was the problem. Did you ever change this setting before? Do you remember what value was there before?

Sure,
the buffer was in "auto" and about the change made in cmd I don't know because I only followed your suggestions.
The second answer is, no, I never changed any parameters in the sw and all the messe happened just when I updated to ver. 1.7 from the previous version, automatically, as suggested from the popup of the previous version.

Today I saw able to run it opening a BRD in a folder, then at the end it freezed again the same way.
But, when restarted the PC the two mkv files created seemed to work properly (the subs forced or not too), so I believe it's still a bug.
The movie was The Legend of Extraordinary Men, if it can help, and I exctrated the main movie and the CS part. I disabled German language and subs. I disabled even all the subs with the exception of Italian, English, French, Spanish.
I still keep my finger crossed
Have a nice weekend