Win7 and PMM General Consensus?

[Slack]

I've read through a couple of threads here and there and cannot seem to get WIN7 to play nice.

I have PMM 3.92 running fine in Win7 RC.

Two main issues.
1) DMS Cradle is seen, but Win7 does not give it a drive letter.
2) Activation

My rig is dual boot, I go to XP when I have to. So far it's been gaming, phatnoise, and allwaysync that have required me to go to XP. I can migrate gaming and allwaysync to win7 without issue. phatnoise is another matter.

1) The cradle. I have the USB 2.0 cradle. Initially, win7 gave me audible confirmation upon inserting the dms into it. And I see a device called "ATA 1.1.0.2" in device manager. When first inserted win 7 apparently hung on installing the device driver for the western digital drive that is in the dms. Although it correctly identified the device (cradle chipset I suppose) as 'USB mass storage device'. So per one of the threads here I installed the "2.0 drivers.exe" file supposedly for the 2.0 USB cradle. (Which didn;t go so well as win7 flagged it as possibly not installing correctly, so I re-installed it with 'recommedned settings' and the nag went away) Now in device manager, I can see the same ATA 1.1.0.2 device. And when I double click it, and select the hardware tab I see two items...
USB Mass Storage Device (of type, Universal Se...)
USB-HS WDC 1200BEVE-0 USB Device (of type Disk drives)
Which looks good to me.
Win7 says they are working properly but does not adding a volume label or drive letter to the drive. A trip into computer management/ storage shows no disk waiting to be mounted / initialized.

Dunno what to do.

2) Activation: Can I boot into XP which is still running an older version of PMM. Prolly 2.something it's all black windows and brushed aluminum type skin. And steal the activation code from it?

If I cant the DMS into Win7 there really isn't much point to installing any version of PMM. They might run fine but will not see the DMS.

[kegger]

I've had basically the same experience with W7 RC1 using a 320gb, PMM 3.92, and a USB 2.0 cradle.  However, I did have luck running PMM 2.30 and a 120gb without any problems, which was totally unexpected given the age of 2.30.  It works, so that's all that matters at this point.

I don't know if the DMS recognition problem will get solved in W7, but that would be a bonus.   Looks like XP for the time being for the 320gb.

[Slack]

I uninstalled 3.92, and installed 2.30. But still in Win 7 - no love for the drive in the cradle (120gig).

[kegger]

Just verified again that 2.30 in W7 RC (not RC1-typo) is working with the 120 gb just like in XP.

I did unistall 3.92, cleaned up the registry, reinstalled, and still no luck getting it to run (just launching it without any DMS gave an immediate error).  The error message comes back with some type of registry problem.

Back to the drawing board for 3.92 using any DMS.  I'm might try hooking up the 320gb directly to W7 and see what the difference is without the cradle in the mix - maybe that will shed some light on the partial recognition problem.

[VorTechS]

You can always look at my PhatHack Media Manager for Win7, there should be no compatability issues than making sure the cradle is operational.

[kegger]

PhatHack willl be fine for drives in the cradle that are recognized by W7.  I know the 320gb is a problem at this time, but not sure about the 250gb or 160gb.  120gb is fine as is.

Interesting that PMM 3.92 chokes on an xml file in the DMS in XP and W7.   However, at least XP is hit or miss for working or not.  W7 - good luck!

[VorTechS]

PhatHack Media Manager doesn't care about the size of your drive..... so I'll assume you mean PhatNoise Media Manager?

[kegger]

Your assumption is correct.  PhatHack works.  It's the drive recognition in W7 RC for the 320gb where the problem starts initially.  The 120g is recognized by W7 RC as it should be.

I want to test the recognition of the 320gb by W7 RC by connecting it directly to the mb with some adapters (40 pin to IDE to SATA, etc.) to see if W7 will recognize the drive with a 'direct" connection and also connecting the drive via another USB 2.0 device.  I would like to try and figure out where the hiccup is, cradle (USB 2.0) or W7? 

[kegger]

Well, the 320gb is recoginzed properly in W7 RC via an IDE adapter through a different USB 2.0 device (all purpose enclosure).  PMM 2.30 had no issues with recognizing it as a DMS, so it worked as normal.  It was speedy as well, but the initial time to recognize PHTDATA didn't really change.  Not a problem however.

It would seem that the USB 2.0 cradle and W7 RC have some sort of conflict that prevents the 320gb from completing the full initialization (it shows in device manager as reported above as a generic, not a WD -USB driver???).  Not sure what that is at the moment.  The 120gb doesn't have this issue.  There isn't an issue with a jumper setting, but it might be something to try anyway.  Haven't tried the USB 1.1 cradle, but I'm think what's the point?   Hmmmmm.....

It would be cool to rig up some sort of USB 2.0 or SATA solution with the appropriate electronics and connector/adapter to accomodate the DMS' small connector along with 5v power and ditch the cradle.  Again, not sure what the problem is, but with the cradle out of the loop, W7 works with the 320gb w/o issue.  Not sure what's next as far a resolution is concerned for W7 RC?  Don't get me wrong, I like the cradle as it certainly has its place without a doubt.  This was just an idea at this point.

Bottom line:  I'm just glad that at least 2.30 and PhatHack work in W7 RC, albeit without the 320gb unless its removed from the DMS case and rigged up a different way in order to work.  Not sure about PMM 3.92 yet...........  Maybe this will be resolved at some point in W7 and the RTM version?

[VorTechS]

The issue will be down to restrictions built into PhatNoise Media Manager verifying against a list of drives that PhatNoise used to distribute.
There is a workaround posted on this site related to the modifying of the DLL which imposes this restriction, but it's considered a risky venture.

PhatHack Media Manager (which is now on the verge of a new release implementing a Save/Eject type process - I just need to do lots of testing on this new process) does not have such restrictions imposed so you can use any drive in the DMS and as long as Windows sees it, PhatHack MM will use it.