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Tim,
I tried your ctrl+A with in PD7 technique and this time PD7 simply closed without producing any kind of error whatsoever. Regretably, I've decided to get a refund and remove the program.
Thanks again to all who offered their time and help.
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Quote:
Hey Matt - well I hope some of these suggestions work. But I totally understand your frustration. I have used Movie Maker too. In Vista it is actually a pretty decent (but limited) product. But hey, it comes bundled free!
I guess the more features these programs load up on the more permutations (and thus problems) they will encounter with various h/w and s/w configurations. It is hard for the manufacturers to test them all so they rely on the general public to do their bug testing! I guess that is sort of a lame defense of PD7, but there you go.
Anyway, I have found Vista (32 bit) in its latest iteration to be very good. I know some of the early users had a ton of problems. Anyway, running Vista now is really making my old XP machine look dated. Perhaps PD7 would run better under the latest version of Vista, as it does on my machine. I'm not suggesting you should reinstall Vista as your OS, but perhaps there are issues with PD7 under XP that don't exist under Vista 32 bit. Again, that is no excuse. My understanding is PD7 has issues on 64 bit Vista. So to your point, they should work on stability issues instead of features.
Tim
I wholly agree.
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Tim,
Thank you again for everything. I'm glad that you haven't shared the same experience that I have. Tonight, I will make sure to try every variation I can for work arounds including how you suggested with ctrl+A within PD7. If I don't get anywhere, I'm going for a refund.
I LOVE PD7's features, but the trouble I'm encountering and the frequency at which it occurs is well beyond my threshold.
To my surprise and disappointment, I agree with you - it does seem par for the course with these products. That blows my mind because if someone just stepped in with something solid, they would be millionaires over night. The market is just sitting there waiting...
It seems that the only way to get something like I'm talking about is if you want to slap down hundreds or even thousands of dollars for a Pixar or Lucasfilm quality program.
I'd be curious to know if Cyberlink would actually save money by making this program more stable versus all of the time spent with customer complaints, refunds, etc. Who knows, maybe it is cheaper for them this way and that's why it is the way it is. All speculation at this point.
Another thought I had was going back to PD6 (which I had much less problems with) and using that until they come out with PD8 and then at that point going back to PD7! By then hopefully more of the bugs will be worked out? I kind of follow that same philosophy with Windows. I got Vista right when it came out and that was a MESS! I shot right back to XP after a few days and that's where I'm staying until it's obsolete. Then when I go back to Vista, it should be in much better shape.
The most solid editor (it's laughable, I know) I've used is Windows Movie Maker. I love that program and how easy it is to use. It's never crashed on me, EVER. What I wouldn't GIVE to have that program with the features that PD7 has. I would be in seventh heaven.
Dafydd,
You could very well be right – I tried reinstalling my OS and blowing everything out of the water to see if that helped and it didn’t. There are a lot of possibilities and it is hard to pinpoint it exactly. With everything I’ve tried so far, however, the variable is consistently PD7, but like you said, it’s hard to be absolutely positive.
I am sincerely relieved that most everyone else is having positive experiences because I feel a great swell of pity for anyone else with similar experiences- it's very trying and frustrating.
Your suggestion of installing on another PC isn’t a bad idea at all and I would like to try that. The only problem I’m facing is a very truncated timetable in which I can still get a refund should things not work out.
Thanks for your patience with my ranting. Yes, I’ve seen others’ posts and many times they get quite belligerent. I really try not to be that way (sometimes I’m not as successful as I’d/we’d like) because it doesn’t solve or help much.
Thank you and everyone else for the helping hands. If I’m able to make any progress, I’ll be sure to update.
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Adrian,
I have not tried dragging and dropping, so I'll give that a whirl and see if it works.
Tim,
I did try opening up a windows explorer and doing and 'open with' PD7 and that produced a crash as well.
Last night I tried to do a defrag of my hard drive to see if that could help improve performance any and after several hours of defragging, it got to 35% and it said it was trying to move a file that started with Cyberlink PowerDirector (the rest of the file name was cut off.) It stayed there for about an hour and I went to bed with it on, hoping that it would be completed by the time I woke up. Well when I woke up it was still on that exact file and 35% completed. I don't know what the cause is, but I'm really getting sick of all the crashes and slow downs that are continually associated with this program. If I can't get this completely resolved by the end of the day, I've decided I'm going to ask for a refund as I'm within my 30 days of purchasing PD7. All in all, my experience thus far has not led me to have a favorable opinion of Cyberlink or PowerDirector 7. The only answer I ever receive from support is to reinstall the program which never corrects the problem. The only solutions I have received are from fellow users on this forum who have found shortcuts and work arounds. While that is extremely friendly and helpful, I personally believe that a company should NEVER have to rely on it's own customers to be providing customer support for themselves. In my mind that is unproffessional and lackadaisical. I've said this several times and I still maintain this position; PD7 has a fantastic potential due to it's features and abilities, but a program that continually crashes isn't worth the 50 cent CD that it comes on. Good deal, or not, it is absolutely worthless if it doesn't work. If it works for some, great, I'm happy for them, but I personally would never sell something with my name on it unless I knew I could provide assurance to my customers that it was a working, quality product.
For me, this program has been a video editing program and rubix cube all rolled in to one; sometimes I get to actually use the program for the purpose that I purchased it and the rest of the time, it's been this puzzle that I've had to spend hours on trying to untangle. If you're one who has the time and patience for puzzles, then you probably don't have an issue with this program, but otherwise I do not recommend this product to anyone.
I apologize if I have excessively ranted, but I hope that my comments and experience can either help someone save their money and time and/or help Cyberlink realize that their lack of being thorough with their products is unacceptable and will cost them money. If they could simply make PD7 reliable and sturdy, I for one would be one of their most loyal customers. Instead, I will be one of many that I've encountered who will not hesitate to provide a truthful account of my experience and opinion.
As far as my specific crashing problem goes - I will try Adrian's suggestion, but it is extremely likely that I will be removing this program from my PC and requesting a refund.
Thank you all for your time, thoughts, help, and assistance. The folks on this forum are the ONLY reason I've stuck it out this long.
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Just as I believe I've worked out one issue another one creeps up. I'm very impressed with PD7's potential, but not impressed with it's actual results.
I'm encountering issues when I simply try to import .mov files. I'll click on 'import media files' and when I simply click once on the .mov file (I don't even get the chance to hit the 'open' button), the hour glass appears for a few seconds and I get the usual, 'PowerDirector has encountered a problem and needs to close' error. Any suggestions as to what I can do to overcome this problem?
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Adrian!
You brilliant, brilliant, British person!!!  That worked perfectly!!! I don't know how I could possibly thank you enough! You saved me hours and hours of work!
I had no clue what those stupid .bak files were and I just ignored them! Question - what is the best way to make copies of the files? With normal Windows applications, if you hit 'Save,' it overwrites the current file with the open version. If you hit 'Save As,' it creates a NEW file while maintaining the settings of the previous file as of the last save. PD7 did NOT work that way for me! What is the best save method for this? (Hopefully that made sense.  )
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PD does have fantastic options, features, etc, however, I would trade a few of those for some increased stability and reliability with the program. All the bells and whistles in the world don't do anyone any good if they only work when the sun hits your roof just right.
I truly believe that if Cyberlink plugged the leaks with PD7 (and any future versions) they would dominate the market with the price and features that already exist. They just need to hire a new software development staff.
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Jeff,
Thank you so very much for taking the time to try and help me with the issue. I had the same thought occur to me and I tried to do that. I deleted everything before the 59% mark and did a File-->Save As and renamed the project so I could have a new file in addition to the original one. Well, for some reason, PD7 saved the new file OVER my original and as well as created a duplicated new one. So my project is pretty much all but wiped out. This video was for a wedding and needless to say, I'm pretty devastated about it.
Again, thanks for the suggestion. I think it may have worked, but PD7 pulled something that I would've never expected. At this point, I'm reduced to starting over and I'm really considering sticking with Windows Movie Maker. 
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Man. I think I might be next. PowerDirector continually crashes on me. I tried doing a 'SAVE AS' and the program wrote over my original file as well as the new one so I have to copies of the same thing. Cost me HOURS of work. I'm really getting fed up with this program.
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Is anyone else tired of seeing this message? I've spent countless hours on this project to create a five minute video. I've tried six times to render this thing and each time when the progress reaches 59%, the program crashes. I saw that Cyberlink has a patch out on 4/8, so I installed it and it made no difference.
I've had my fill of headaches with this company and program, but the one I had before this, I will say, I did receive sufficient help to solve the problem. I'm going to give PowerDirector one more chance to prove itself as a quality product, but if not I'm gone for good as a customer.
Frustrations aside, does anyone know what I can try to overcome this problem? I really need some help with this. Thanks in advance...
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By no means do I mean to insult your intelligence, but have you restarted your computer each time? When I was unable to open PD after getting an error, I restarted and was able to open it.
I know that tech support has some unpopularity based on a lot of feedback I've seen, but give them the benefit of the doubt first. They are resending me a new backup CD and arranged for an ftp download if I need it. I appreciated that.
I completely understand your frustrations. PD is a great program, but it does have its flaws and it would be naive to say any differently.
Let us know what tech support says....
P.S. One more question - are you able to successfuly uninstall PowerDirector? If you're not, I can give you something to try.
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hasi6,
Which error message did you receive, exactly?
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Ha, ha, ha, at first I thought that was a lot of work just to do a simple fade-out, but I guess that gives you the freedom to fade out to any color you want? Thanks for the tip - I'll be using it frequently!
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Cranston,
Well, if I HAVE TO say something positive about my experience thus far its that the folks I've encountered on this forum seem to be extremely friendly and helpful.
I'm relieved to hear that someone out there has had such a consistently positive experience with these programs. I do hope that the misfortunes I've experienced are the vast exception. I suppose it stands to reason that if the opposite were true, Cyberlink probably wouldn't be around to create version 7 in the first place? I did a lot of google research before buying v7 and if I had to average all of the comments I read, it would say that PowerDirector is a great program with a lot of funcitonality....when it works. The consistent cons that I saw were frequent crashes and little help from customer service/tech support. Again, this is all just what I read. Having seen some impressive tools with v6, I decided to give it a gamble and see if I could be one of the lucky ones that never or rarely saw problems or issues with the program. When I saw that wasn't happening for me, I became instantly afraid that I was going to share a similar fate to the several tales of doom I read.
In response to your suggestions, I think my not being able to download the program might be a "fault" of my computer, but I highly doubt that the CD is. I tried running the CD on two different drives, reaching the same result. I also ran about 25 different program CD's, all of which ran completely fine.
To be fair, I will give an update on the up and down roller-coaster ride. When I tried to download the program from the site, I would get errors saying that my server had signature requirements that Digital River couldn't meet, despite the fact that I had practically shut off any firewall protection found on my computer. The strange thing was that when I would click 'OK' on the error, the download would continue. So after clicking 'OK' on this error about every 30 seconds or so (for half an hour), the download completed and I ran the installation successfully. This was the second time I made this attempt and the first time, everything blew to pieces. I was relieved when it worked this time.
I started running v7 and it crashed on me twice and wouldn't re-open another time until I restarted my computer. I've messed around a little with the buttons and I agree that it looks like a very nice tool....when it works. I'm still waiting to hear back from tech support/customer service as I would like to be sent a replacement backup CD.
My current project is making a wedding video for my fiance to play at our reception next month. If all holds, I think it can be a success *knock on wood.* Just NO more crashes!!! Let this serve as a lesson to CLICK 'SAVE' FREQUENTLY!!!
Thank you both so much for your help and attention. I'm willing to bet that we'll be bumping into each other more in the future (especially considering I still can't figure out with the 'fade to black' effect is!!!!).
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I CANNOT believe this. I got my backup CD from Cyberlink today, and THAT doesn't even work. When I ran the CD, an error pops up that says:
"The contents of this file cannot be unpacked. The executable you are attempting to run has been corrupted. Please obtain another copy of the file, verify it's integrity, and try again."
So far I am completely unimpressed with the quality of product that Cyberlink is producing.
Should I just get my money back because this is a lost cause, or am I just unlucky enough to not be able to purchase a download OR a CD from this company that is of any value?
Thoughts anyone? I don't mean to be overly antagonistic, but I don't see how this could be acceptable to anyone on either side of the fence!
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They sent me a generic email that said to try redownloading the program again. Fortunately, I found out on Windows.com how to remove the program from the hard drive registry and that took care of the error. I was able to get v6 back on, but I'm not able to download v7 that I purchased. Tech support said to try turning off my firewall protection, which I did, and that didn't get me anywhere. After hearing about the reputation that Cyberlink's tech support has, I'm just going to wait for my backup CD to arrive in the mail.
Thanks anyway! 
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Hi!
I just bought v7 and when I tried to download it, I got an error saying it couldn't read the setup initiation file when trying to uninstall the previous version. I've tried deleting all the files I can and it doesn't make a difference. I downloaded the Windows clean up file from the support page and when it gives you the list of programs you can remove, I don't see PowerDirector or Cyberlink anywhere in that list. When I go to Add/Remove Programs in Windows, it has two Cyberlink PowerDirector programs, but when I try to uninstall them from there, I get that same error. I've tried emailing Cyberlink, but get no response at all. Can anyone please help?
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