VirtualDub suddenly stopped capturing video, won't play?

[stevevid]

I put together a fresh from the ground up build of a Windows XP Pro 32 bit, service pack 2 system on a new hard drive on my Intel-based motherboard. It's a barebones standalone system using an ATI 600 USB with VirtualDub with no LAN connections and no antivirus software.

The system has worked great capturing almost three tapes--and then VirtualDub 1.9.11 stopped capturing video after running for one and a half hours on the latest tape. VDub's video preview went black. I stopped the capture and checked if the file was present. It was and VDub could open the file but not play it. The play controls only advanced the video ONE frame and stopped. I could manually drag the position slider and see the video was there. I got the same action trying to play any captured video file with VDub. VDub's status window showed time was incrementing but video render rate was 0. Windows Media Player could play the video fine. I tried running the new file with VDub on my main Windows 7-based system and VDub could play the video.

Any idea what has happened to the system?

My attempts at rectifying the situation included:

- Rebooted system
- Copied a fresh copy of VDub from my main system (several times with reboots in between)
- Removed the only additional software--X-rite's calibration software
- Made sure no extraneous Windows software was installed
- Checked system status: only 274 MB of memory out of 3GB used while VDub loaded and trying to play a video. CPU usage 0%
- Reinstalled Windows XP over itself
- Reinstalled EAH4550 video card driver
- Uninstalled and reinstalled the ATI 600 USB device
- VDub can capture again, but it can not play video. Still only advances one frame and stops.
- Probably other things I can't remember

I've run out of ideas. I'm especially confused because the old Windows Media Player that came with XP sp2 plays any of the avi-based videos fine.

Help!
Steve

Other system info: Intel Core 2 Duo CPU running at 3GHz
3GB ramEAH4550 video card
new case
lots of fans

[sanlyn]

You mean you didn't try uninstalling Vdub and re-installing?
Go into the VirtualDub program folder in Program Files (x86). Double-click the file "auxsetup.exe" to run it. Choose to remove all VDub registry entries.
To re-install (there is no "installer") just execute Virtualdub.exe the same way you did when you first copied VDub into your machine.

Otherwise you left something out of your XP installation, such as motherboard and chipset drivers. Meanwhile I guess you know that every time you reinstall Windows you wipe out all previous registry entries.

[stevevid]

I didn't know about auxsetup.exe to uninstall VDub. All I had read about was that VDub did not do an install. I ran auxsetup.exe and used regedit to verify that everything was gone. I found virtualdub.org and subentries still existed under HKEY_Users\Software and I deleted them.

When I reran VirtualDub I got the GNU notice before entering the program, which indicated it was starting fresh. No change--VDub 1.9.11 still cannot play any video. VirtualDub 1.10.4 also fails. Interestingly, VDub's "Run video analysis pass" works and it shows periodic frames just like it did before.

Oddly, the following programs do play avi videos:

- VirtualDubMod 1.5.10.2
- VirtualDub2
- Windows Media Player

The XP installation was not a fresh install. I ran the install program to install XP over the existing XP to resolve any errors that may exist. Preexisting settings and drivers remained in place. The registry was not destroyed and rebuilt.

Any additional thoughts from anyone on what is causing VirtualDub to fail when it worked fine and then didn't? How would a driver or some setting let some programs work and all of a sudden keep similar programs from working?

[lordsmurf]

You probably have DirectX issues. An easy test for it is to disable the DirectX options in the preferences.

A complete reinstall is probably needed. You're having too many problems, and it's not normal. If you want to keep the existing system, transform it into a VM, and then store that VM on your newer non-XP system (accessed via Virtualbox). I create a VM every time I migrate systems, or reuse older hardware for a new purpose.