Sound files, Crashing, and Windows 7 (not as catchy as sun, sea and sangria) Update??
aoifemcloughlin
I've been running an experiment which has sound files included on a
machine using XP and it has been running fine. My university has now
updated all machines to Windows 7 (and my own personal laptop is on
windows 7) and now my experiment is crashing and the sound files won't
play or at best will play but delayed.
A quick search of this oh so useful forum informs me that this is a
common problem. Has anyone found a way around it that works?
I find it hard to believe that PST have not done anything to remedy
this problem which has been known about since the rough days when we
were confined to using Vista. Its unacceptable from them.
Any one any ideas?
Thanks in advance,
Aoife
David McFarlane
>My university has now updated all machines to Windows 7 (and my own
>personal laptop is on
>windows 7)
As you found out, this is a big, big mistake. Folks, take control,
do NOT let your universities do this to you!! Around here we have a
firm policy of ordering lab computers with XP already installed, and
as a last resort we reformat and install XP ourselves. Sorry state
of affairs, I agree, but it does the job. (And yes, I know
researchers who wish they could still do everything in DOS.)
-- David McFarlane, Professional Faultfinder
Lidia Suarez
Michiel Spape
Hiya,
Did anyone try yet to run E-Prime in “WinXP Mode” in Windows 7? I can’t imagine the timing will be brilliant, but perhaps good enough for development purposes…
Best,
Mich
Michiel Spapé
Research Fellow
Perception & Action group
University of Nottingham
School of Psychology
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aoifemcloughlin
PST have just replied to me with this response:
Aoife,
While PST has not officially published timing results for Windows 7,
internal timing results have been positive for Windows 7 in regards to
experiment timing, display accuracy, and response devices in
comparison to other operating systems. The caveaut to why the delay
for publishing the timing results is in regards to support for the PST
Serial Response Box (SRBOX) under x64 editions of the operating
systems as well as low latency consistent timing for audio/sound
experiments. PST is internally verifying a 64-bit driver for the
SRBOX. For audio experiment, PST is recommending end users consider
using the ASIO4LL driver or ensure their system has a CoreAudio driver
on their system. PST will be releasing a utility to test your system
to determine if ASIO or CoreAudio is the appropriate API for your
sound paradigms. Please keep review of the web support site or forum
for any updates.
Sincerely,
Cindy Carper
Technical Consultant
I have attempted downloading XP mode on Windows 7 but as it is my
personal laptop that I am running the experiment on I only have
Windows 7 Home Edition. XP mode is only available to Professional and
above.
Currently I am about to install a virtual machine on to my laptop and
then run that using XP, details available here
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/11060/create-an-xp-mode-for-windows7-home-versions-and-vista/.
I can only speculate at this point that it may mess up the timing a
bit, but will update here once I have everything installed and up and
running. Fingers crossed! The research I'm conducting is for my PhD
and I would really like to graduate at some point!!!
I'll be back with an update over the next few days,
Aoife
On Oct 12, 10:09 am, Michiel Spape <Michiel.Sp...@nottingham.ac.uk>
wrote:
> Hiya,
>
> Did anyone try yet to run E-Prime in "WinXP Mode" in Windows 7? I can't imagine the timing will be brilliant, but perhaps good enough for development purposes...
> Best,
>
> Mich
>
> Michiel Spapé
>
> Research Fellow
>
> Perception & Action group
>
> University of Nottingham
>
> School of Psychology
>
> www.cognitology.eu
>
> From: e-p...@googlegroups.com [mailto:e-p...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Lidia Suarez
> Sent: 12 October 2010 01:33
> To: e-p...@googlegroups.com
> Subject: Re: Sound files, Crashing, and Windows 7 (not as catchy as sun, sea and sangria) Update??
>
> Hi Aoife,
>
> I wrote to them more than two months ago about this, they requested some files and I am still waiting for their response/solution. Unacceptable. Go for XP.
>
> Regards,
>
> Lidia
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "E-Prime" group.
> To post to this group, send email to e-p...@googlegroups.com.
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Michiel Spape
Thank you greatly for the information, much appreciated!
Here's my 2p: I believe it is really nice that PST is finally testing ASIO drivers for the use in real-time experiments, but I'm slightly confused about how this is actually implemented. As far as I can see, and have always been assuming, E-Prime 1 (not sure about 2) relies on DirectSound - since they have never made a claim professional audio systems are required. ASIO, you see, is a Steinberg (who developed Cubase) framework for delivering realtime audio in scenarios where it really matters - i.e. in pro-audio music production, which generally required (up till a few years) a dedicated pro-audio system. In my years with E-Prime, I have, however, never heard of any such thing being used in conjunction with E-Prime, and instead have relied on the rather unassuming (Microsoft) DirectSound (part of DirectX framework, which is, I think, mainly developed for games) to take care of this. ASIO4ALL is a bit of a 'hobbyist' hack that enables most integrated hardware to run in low-latency music production systems... It is, however, not bad, and often better than bad 'real' ASIO drivers.
Meanwhile, all that is of no concern whatsoever to Windows 7: ASIO has been around for ages (studios, like labs, don't immediately switch to new OS'es), is cross-platform, whereas CoreAudio is for the Macintosh (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoreAudio), and finally, since Vista, Microsoft has released the low-latency WaveRT drivers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WaveRT), that would conceivably a much better option than either ASIO (for different hardware) or CoreAudio (for the Mac).
Last, and most importantly: how on Earth do you do this: "For audio experiment, PST is recommending end users consider
using the ASIO4LL driver or ensure their system has a CoreAudio driver on their system."?
Best,
Mich
Michiel Spapé
Research Fellow
Perception & Action group
University of Nottingham
School of Psychology
www.cognitology.eu
Hi all,
Aoife,
Sincerely,
Cindy Carper
Technical Consultant
Aoife
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/e-prime?hl=en.
aoifemcloughlin
To be honest most of the response from PST is very much over my head.
I'm hoping that I'll be able to get someone to explain it to me in
plain old english later on this evening. Right now I just wish I had
never decided to get a new laptop and stuck with the old one that
worked. Life was much simpler then. I still haven't managed to get the
virtual machine up and running as I am waiting on a copy of XP from my
institutions IT dept but as we are in the middle of "Open Days" here
no one seems quite willing to help me out on that score.
I will update again once I have actually managed to achieve anything
that I set out to do this week!
Aoife
On Oct 12, 1:42 pm, Michiel Spape <Michiel.Sp...@nottingham.ac.uk>
wrote:
> Thank you greatly for the information, much appreciated!
>
> Here's my 2p: I believe it is really nice that PST is finally testing ASIO drivers for the use in real-time experiments, but I'm slightly confused about how this is actually implemented. As far as I can see, and have always been assuming, E-Prime 1 (not sure about 2) relies on DirectSound - since they have never made a claim professional audio systems are required. ASIO, you see, is a Steinberg (who developed Cubase) framework for delivering realtime audio in scenarios where it really matters - i.e. in pro-audio music production, which generally required (up till a few years) a dedicated pro-audio system. In my years with E-Prime, I have, however, never heard of any such thing being used in conjunction with E-Prime, and instead have relied on the rather unassuming (Microsoft) DirectSound (part of DirectX framework, which is, I think, mainly developed for games) to take care of this. ASIO4ALL is a bit of a 'hobbyist' hack that enables most integrated hardware to run in low-latency music production systems... It is, however, not bad, and often better than bad 'real' ASIO drivers.
aoifemcloughlin
Success!!!! After installing a virtual machine and then installing
Windows XP as the OS, I installed e-prime on to the virtual machine
and the experiments are working fine. I don't seem to be experiencing
any timing problems or anything.
It may be slightly fiddly and annoying having to install all this, and
it perhaps wouldn't be an answer if you would have to do this to an
entire lab full of computers but for anyone who only has a couple of
licenses and is experiencing issues with Windows 7 this is definitely
a feasible solution!
Thanks to everyone for their help!
Aoife
Lidia Suarez
I have dowloaded (from PST support) the latest version of Eprime2Prof in a Vista PC and the experiments are working fine. Before, there were stimuli presentation delays (when using audio files) or the experiment crashed. However, I cannot run the RefreshClockTest in Vista or Windows 7. When I am trying to run the RefreshClockTest, a message keeps popping up indicating that the Standby or Hibernated functions are enabled. I have disabled/turned off all that can affect the RefreshClockTest (e.g., anti-virus, screensaver...) but still the message pops up. This only occurs when using Eprime2 in Vista and Windows 7 (with XP the RefreshClockTest works fine)...Has this happened to you before? I have also asked PST but I know they will take some time to respond...wondering if you have gone through this before...Please advise. Thanks.
Regards,
Lidia
francesc...@ymail.com
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Francesco Biondi
David McFarlane
Yes, I have seen the same message running RefreshClockTest with EP2
under Vista. Have not tried yet under Win7. I just ignore it and
proceed. The message means to tell you that the measured results
might not reflect what is possible under ideal conditions with that
machine, so if you still get good results under the test conditions
then all should work well under your desired operating conditions. I
suspect however that Microsoft changed how programs can detect
Standby/Hibernate functions and RefreshClockTest has not kept up with
the change, in which case the measured results probably do reflect
your desired operating conditions.
I will also be interested to know what PST says about this when they
reply to you.
-- David McFarlane, Professsional Faultfinder
Michiel Spape
Hiya,
No idea, having no Windows Vista/7 – Eprime combination (which I think PST doesn’t support anyway – I expect the common advice people will give you is “get XP, despite it not being supported by Microsoft), nor E-Prime2. Despite that, you mention “Standby or Hibernation” should be off but *only* mention you turned off other things. Now, since I do have Win7 at home, I know it sits in a fairly awkward position of the configuration panel – indeed, I had to especially look it up on the Help thingy, and how often do computer-geeks read manuals, despite their liking for shouting RTFM? Anyway, so just to ask:
- Have you indeed turned off “Sleep Mode” (otherwise known as hibernation)?
Furthermore, when you say “this only happens in Eprime2 in Vista and Windows 7, do you mean, “IF (EPRIME 2 && VISTA && WIN7) THEN CRASH”? That is to say, it doesn’t happen in EPrime 1? OR, it does not happen in Windows XP? On the same computer? So, no, it may have happened to me before that RefreshClockTest didn’t run for me on a Win98SE computer running E-Prime 1.2, but that’s not what you’re after, I take it. If it is, though, it turned out I actually hadn’t changed all the power options/schemes to “always on”, screensaver OFF (not blank) and hibernation OFF.
Best,
Mich
Michiel Spapé
Research Fellow
Perception & Action group
University of Nottingham
School of Psychology
From: e-p...@googlegroups.com [mailto:e-p...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Lidia Suarez
Sent: 22 March 2011 12:06
To: e-p...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Sound files, Crashing, and Windows 7 (not as catchy as sun, sea and sangria) Update??
Dear all,
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David McFarlane
> how often do computer-geeks read manuals, despite their liking for
> shouting RTFM?
Hmm, then I must be the exception, because I always start by
thoroughly reading whatever documentation I can find, and complain at
any lack of documentation (e.g., E-Prime). I often say of myself &
my job, "I'm the guy who reads the manuals."
Best,
-- David McFarlane, Professional Faultfinder
(E.g, just read the manual for my new iPod, two manuals for Camtasia
Studio, and still working through manuals for iPad and Evernote, etc.)
Lidia Suarez
Michiel Spape
Hi,
I agree with David – it’s pretty likely that the screensavers states are polled changed between XP and Vista, so it presumably just detects it incorrectly. Since the refreshclocktest is just an .es, I suppose you can easily hack it… Yes, checked now. The inline “powercheck” executes several functions, which you find, in turn, in the User script are, and which return true or false depending on the check, e.g.:
Function IsScreenSaverEnabled() As Boolean
'Default
IsScreenSaverEnabled = False
Dim strActive As String
strActive = Rct_Registry_QueryValueString(RCT_REGISTRY_HKEY_CURRENT_USER, "Control Panel\\Desktop", "ScreenSaveActive")
'Should represent a string integer
If IsNumeric(strActive) Then
'If not zero, then screen saver is on
If CLng(strActive) <> 0 Then IsScreenSaverEnabled = True
End If
End Function
… so you can see, it’s not exactly the best way to have this script working in later OS’es, since it just polls the registry. Suppose there’s not even this key in the registry (pretty likely), then chances are, you won’t get far.
But all that, if you don’t like programming, or, like me, only have so many minutes, you could of course, safely ignore. See the experiment, and where it fails:
“It has been determined…”
But, don’t skip the small print!
“Press the letter P key to enable simulating mouse responses. This is only recommended if your network policies do not permit adjusting your power or screen saver settings.”
And press P instead. Voila, it continues.
Also possible, in the inline:
“If Not bFail Then Goto PowerCheckPassLabel”
Change this to:
“If bFail Then Goto PowerCheckPassLabel”
Also works.
Best,
Mich
Michiel Spapé
Research Fellow
Perception & Action group
University of Nottingham
School of Psychology
From: e-p...@googlegroups.com [mailto:e-p...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Lidia Suarez
Sent: 23 March 2011 02:50
To: e-p...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Sound files, Crashing, and Windows 7 (not as catchy as sun, sea and sangria) Update??
Hi all,
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Michiel Spape
I read the E-Basic Help and such (mainly MSDN SDKs) and the manual of my motherboard, but generally not VCR manuals! I find it rather depends on the inverse relationship between quality and complexity of the software, to be honest - Cubase (complex, good quality): guide/helpfiles are extremely necessary; FreeUndelete (simple, bad quality): guide/helpdfiles necessary. Even easier to work this out is by blindly walking forward with some new techy bit, stumbling over everything, then try to work it out from manuals, forums, helpfiles, friends.
... That said, I had to consult the manual of my hoover the other day :)
Best,
Mich
Michiel Spapé
Research Fellow
Perception & Action group
University of Nottingham
School of Psychology
www.cognitology.eu
Mich,
--
David McFarlane
>Thanks for your replies. I will keep you informed about PST's reply
>as soon as I get it. I agree with David's reply:
>"I suspect however that Microsoft changed how programs can detect
>Standby/Hibernate functions and RefreshClockTest has not kept up
>with the change"
>
> Just to summarise:
>I am testing Eprime2 Prof (no Eprime 1.2). The RefreshClockTest
>needs to be run with the anti-virus, screensaver, standby, and
>hibernated functions off. Otherwise, a message prompts you to turn
>them off before continuing. If I turn off these on XP,
>RefreshClockTest works. If I turn these on Vista, RefreshClockTest
>ask me again to turn them off (when they are already turned off) and
>it cannot proceed with the test (this is different to David's case,
>who can proceed with the test).
Just to clarify, by "I just ignore it and proceed" I meant that I
press P, as Mich explained (thanks).
> The same happened when I tried Windows 7. Eprime2 comes with the
> same manual than Eprime1.2...(no more information about new OS such as Vista).
Indeed. The Getting Started Guide for EP2 is new, and so is the New
Features Guide (which looks like manual pages that will later get
incorporated into the User's Guide, so do not ignore this). But, as
explicitly spelled out on p. 3 or 4 of the .pdf files for the EP2
User's Guide and Reference Guide, "This documentation is a work in
progress. What follows is the original Version 1 documentation."
>Thanks. Let's see what PST says...
-- David McFarlane, Professional Faultfinder
Lidia Suarez
Thanks again. Now everything is alright. I learnt my lesson:
1. Read the small letter (press P) when using RefreshClockTest in Vista or Windows 7.
2. Read the manuals (in detail and the latest ones). Re-read the manual and look for answers in all the guides (no just one).
3. Download from PST the updated versions and test them before complaining...
I really appreciate your help. PST has not replied to these questions yet. I do not know what I would do without all the help received from this forum. Thanks.
Regards,
Lidia
Lidia Suarez
If any of you is having problems with sound and Vista or Windows 7, this may be useful. This is the reply I have received from PST regarding this problem:
Here is what you should know about running E-Prime 2.0 and 1.x on Vista and 7 machines. This article provides more details on running 1.x on Vista/7 machines: INFO: E-Prime 1.x Support for Windows Vista. Until formal timing tests can be performed on a number of Windows Vista machines running E-Prime, PST encourages the use of E-Prime and Windows Vista only for design and testing purposes. Subject stations that are collecting data should be directed to Windows XP and Windows 2000 machines.
I suggest that you keep using E-Prime 2.0 because the only version of E-Prime that has been tested and verified on Vista/7 machines is version 2.0.8.90. While PST has not officially published timing results for Windows 7, E-Prime 2.0.8.90 and later versions have been approved for Windows 7 x86/x64, Windows Vista SP2 x86/x64, and Windows XP SP3 x86 with the exception of Windows 7 or Vista paradigms that require sound startup latency values of less than 30ms. We have delayed publishing the timing results while we continue to work on consistent audio timing. PST is currently verifying a variety of sound drivers and recommends the use of Windows XP for experiments with sound related timing until further notice. PST intends to provide a more formal statement about Windows 7 shortly. Please check this article for updates: INFO: Windows 7 support in E-Prime.
All of this said, I was able to run your experiment without any crashing on a Windows 7 machine. This leads me to believe that you can make some changes to your computer that should stop the crashes. Here are some steps to try:
1) Ensure that you have the latest version of E-Prime, which is 2.0.8.90. You can verify this by opening E-Studio and going to Help - About E-Studio. If you want to download the latest version, you can access the download via the Download/E-Prime/E-Prime 2.0 Release Candidate links to the left. Make sure that you download and install the version that matches the license you purchased (i.e., E-Prime 2.0 Standard or E-Prime 2.0 Professional).
2) Please use CodecConfig to check the codecs on your computer. This article contains instructions on this as well as links to codecs you may want to download and install: FEATURE: CodecConfig provides ability to choose codecs used for Movie and Sound rendering.
3) Disable or shutdown any background applications that may be causing a conflict. Here is an article with more information on that: INFO: How to use MSCONFIG to troubleshoot machine configuration and reduce background applications.