Sunday, August 30, 2009

No DVD Sound in Windows 7

I installed Windows 7 on an older (4 years) laptop this past weekend and encountered a rather irksome problem that has a very simple fix.

Symptoms:
  • Audio works fine, until you stick in a DVD and try to play it with WMP12: no sound.
  • WMP12 playing mp3's is fine, but stick in a DVD: no sound.
  • Load a DVD ISO on a virtual drive and try to play: no sound.
Because of some trouble I had with the Realtek drivers for windows 7, and the Sony DVD drive, I was not certain at this point where precisely the problem lay. Searching a bit for Realtek, DVD and Sony's DW-D56A didn't turn anything up, so I started looking more broadly.

Turns out a post on AVForums by Damernath pointed out a very simple solution that worked like a charm. I repeat below for your benefit:
  1. Go to: Control Panel -> Sound
  2. On the "Playback" tab select "Speakers" and click "Properties"
  3. On the "Advanced" tab uncheck "Allow applications to take exclusive control of this device"
That's it. Restart WMP and watch your DVD glory.

Thursday, August 6, 2009

MS Deploy RC1 Install ... Odd!

In upgrading from MS Deploy Beta1 to RC1, I found an undocumented oddity which could stump you for who knows how long.

If you install the RC without first uninstalling the beta, the Web Deployment Agent Service refuses to start. From the command line, "net start msdepsvc" returns

The service did not report an error

And no error is logged in the Event Log either.

The fix? Simple, just go into Programs and Features, select the Web Deployment Tool Release Candidate 1 and choose "Repair".

All fixed.