[Fourlanders] URGENT...Writelog problem discovered

[Ron Rogers]

To all W4NH band captains and users of Writelog >>

 

An anomaly was discovered late last night and confirmed today during station
setup at W4ZST's house. It appears to be linked to a recent (not identified
yet) MicroSoft update and NOT an issue caused by any particular version of
WL. However, it DOES appear to affect ALL versions of Writelog we have
used..including V11.11.

 

IF YOU HAVE NOT ALLOWED YOUR WRITELOG  PC TO PERFORM A MS UPDATE WITHIN THE
PAST MONTH, DISABLE ALL FURTHER UPDATES IMMEDIATELY UNTIL WE HAVE MORE INFO
ON THE CAUSE OF THE PROBLEM !  

 

Failure mode > Recording .wav files 

 

Writelog appears to function normally except when attempting to record a new
.wav file now. WL will play previously recorded and saved .wav files as
normal. But when a new .wav file is recorded the mic is muted during record
even though a .wav file is stored in the proper folder.  

 

It was confirmed during multiple experimentation and debug today that this
is NOT an issue with .wav file playback or recorded .wav files being stored
in different folder locations (as we have experienced in the past during
simple WL version upgrades)  

 

To confirm, a suspect recorded file was copied to another PC and Windows
media player was used to confirm it contained no digital voice. Then a known
good file was transferred from a functioning WL machine, and placed in the
WL  .wav file folder of the machine in question. That .wav file played
normally when F2 was pressed. So playback set up is fine. 

 

All audio setup screens, soundcard parameters, and various audio mixer
screens of BOTH Windows XP and Writelog have been explored with no success.
The only hint visibly seen is a window within the WL audio mixer screen that
shows the mic being muted. Un-Checking the Mute box lasts only until a
Shift-F2 is performed to record a message. At that point, the mic appears to
go muted again !!  

 

This has now been observed on 3 different WL computers recently allowed to
do a MS update, including a computer running WL 10.65 used successfully for
the past 7 W4NH VHF contests. It too, is now "broken" !

 

Even when a computer is "rolled back" to a previous version of Windows XP
the situation is not corrected. It just appears that some recent MS update
has modified something in a WL initialization file.

 

My next step the next few days is to uninstall my WL 11.11, allow the PC to
receive all MS updates once again, then attempt to re-install WL V 11.11 to
see if the problem is corrected. 

 

This particular PC was the one that I began with back in Oct. with a fresh
hard drive, fresh install of XP, and full install of WL V 11.11. The box has
been running flawlessly and everything in WL installed cleanly and worked
well...until last night when doing a final test before contest in 2 weeks. 

 

Stay tuned for more updates !

 

 

Ron

WW8RR

 

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