Need emergency help!

[inkman996]

In a major bind and have no idea what to do.

First off running an IMAC with VM Fusion Ware running Windows Home Premium.

Windows is how I run all art through Corel and output to film using Film Maker

Film Maker has been a major PITA since day one, it is not very intuitive for setting up at all and seems to have a major memory leak, causing me to have to reboot the MAC twice a day. Well earlier had to reboot and when windows started up some how Windows decided it had updates to install. WTF I make it a priority to always shut off windows updates and automatic installation of this crap, why? I prefer to do things on my time and terms.

Anyways sure enough something is going wrong with the update and now windows is stuck in the nether, it will not do anything but hang on a damn configuration screen and I absolutely have no idea how to stop it. I tried rebooting in Safe mode several times etc. To no avail, it always reverts to the dam update process. Being on a Mac and not an actual box I do not think I can even access command prompt or any boot or bios.

Below is a screen shot of where it ends up perpetually after rebooting. Not sure if anyone here has a clue how to deal with this, I am absolutely swapped with work and have dozens of films to output. I seriously want to smash my head against a wall several times and see if things happen differently.

[jvanick]

many times the windows updates failing are caused by the PC clock being set incorrectly... I can't remember off the top of my head how far off the clock has to be before there's issues, but... one thing to check would be to see what the clock on your IMAC is set to.

-J

[inkman996]

Just checked clock is fine. Thing is I never turned on automatic updates, it did it on its own, you know how Microsoft thinks it knows whats best for you right? I always do updates on my own time and when things are not so critical. I believe at this point a .dll or something similar is always going to execute on boot up and I am completely screwed with out anyway to configure anything. And at this point looking at the screen shot windows is probably corrupted maybe?

[Frog]

Is it really running perpetually, or is it possible that it merely seems like that, and eventually it will indeed revert or whatever it is trying to do?
I recently had an hour long Windows update issue on my old laptop.

[inkman996]

It has been several hours now and the lag it is causing to the mac is crazy.

[GraphicDisorder]

It has been several hours now and the lag it is causing to the mac is crazy.

Shitty deal. Could be hung? Could be just a big update. I know recently one of my rigs struggled on a update that took awhile and it was a 6 core 32gb machine.

[blue moon]

go buy a $99 PC and get up and running. sort out the mess some other time. . .

pierre

[ftembroidery]

I have a problem with my Seagate Replica external HD screwing up the updates.  It won't let my machine reboot at all.  I have to manually turn the PC off for a few seconds (about 30), and turn it back on.  After doing so, the update and subsequent configuration can take a while.

[inkman996]

Well I did or was in the process of doing what Pierre said and I set up an old PC and plugged in my art back up drive to it. I can use it for art, getting Film Maker to work tho yea right. Going to have to call them and pay the $75 tech fee to get up and running. Their software is nothing but a joke. It is awesome when it is running but when you have problems forget about it. We are dumping FM soon and moving on to something that is not such a joke to install and have actually work every time you need it to.

Anyways refreshed the windows on the MAC with the installation disk and finally got back into windows, but guess what FM doesn't work. Go figure

The RAM went up to 90% usage even tho nothing is running, went into services turned off all the windows crap I could and rebooted now windows will not start at all.

Looks like a clean install is in the future.

I am done with MAC's, I am done with Windows, I am getting a white board

[mk162]

White boards are nice, but it's really hard to make screens with them.  I have some rubylith I can sell you.

[blue moon]

Well I did or was in the process of doing what Pierre said and I set up an old PC and plugged in my art back up drive to it. I can use it for art, getting Film Maker to work tho yea right. Going to have to call them and pay the $75 tech fee to get up and running. Their software is nothing but a joke. It is awesome when it is running but when you have problems forget about it. We are dumping FM soon and moving on to something that is not such a joke to install and have actually work every time you need it to.

Anyways refreshed the windows on the MAC with the installation disk and finally got back into windows, but guess what FM doesn't work. Go figure

The RAM went up to 90% usage even tho nothing is running, went into services turned off all the windows crap I could and rebooted now windows will not start at all.

Looks like a clean install is in the future.

I am done with MAC's, I am done with Windows, I am getting a white board

your issues with FM might be with running it on the Mac. We've had it on half a dozen computers and once it's up and running, it's rock solid. Setting it up though is another story. Sometimes it works, sometimes it takes few days to work out the kinks. To make matters worse, their tech support is below par. That's why I usually tell ppl to buy it from Scott Fresner as he then supports it.

Call me if you need help getting it going, I'll PM you the number.

pierre

[inkman996]

All good Pierre, it is an issue with ports. Epson keeps hijacking the FM printer and makes all kinds of issues with the ports. Once I got everything sorted port wise it seems to be working. What does happen occasionally and I will never understand is after a reboot Epson makes more copies of itself in the printers, so I end up with Epson 1400, Epson 1400 (1), Epson 1400 (3)

Strange

[blue moon]

All good Pierre, it is an issue with ports. Epson keeps hijacking the FM printer and makes all kinds of issues with the ports. Once I got everything sorted port wise it seems to be working. What does happen occasionally and I will never understand is after a reboot Epson makes more copies of itself in the printers, so I end up with Epson 1400, Epson 1400 (1), Epson 1400 (3)

Strange

you don't need the epson drivers, FM has its own . . .

pierre

[Squeegie]

To address the Windows update failure issue...I have had no less than a dozen systems (all PC Windows7) in the last 2 moths that had the same Windows update troubles.

The solution was to install the updates one at a time until the offending update was discovered.  Once isolated, I added it to the "ignore" list.

Some systems were easier to fix than others.  One system took me almost 8 hours to fix.  I should have just copied the user data and reloaded the system.  That route would have been less than 3 hours of my time.  The end user would then still need to reinstall necessary programs but would have been a lot less time and frustration for me.

Best of luck,
Bill

[ScreenFoo]

We are dumping FM soon and moving on to something that is not such a joke to install and have actually work every time you need it to.

I realize you're pissed, and I can empathize, believe me.  I've seen the same port issues in native Win installs with the Epson driver installed.
IMHO it's certainly a little temperamental like most 'production' software, but does well enough if you're not installing too much stuff on the same computer.

I have no idea how much worse it gets in VM, but you'd think at least the port issue would be easier to solve running a virtual machine.