As anyone following my blog recently knows I've been blogging a lot less and instead focusing most of my free time either into presentations or my Podcast. To create a Podcast is actually a lot harder then it seemed at first, but thanks to my good friend and Microsoft colleague Peter Laudati we have been releasing episodes and pushing forward.
For my audio editing needs I decided to invest and pay out of my own pocket for Adobe (around $200.00) for Soundbooth CS4, a descent audio editing product. It lets me cleanup the podcast, take out unwanted segments and generate good quality MP3 files, it even has descent noise reduction for this occasional live recordings.
Enter the Blue Screen
Recently I started using Soundbooth on my newly upgraded laptop running Windows 7 RTM. I had actually kept Soundbooth only on my Vista instance because of a strange issue i discovered (but honestly didn't have a chance to follow-up) with random Blue screen crash while running in Windows RC! I hoped it was merely a Release Candidate issue and moved on.
Now that I have upgraded to RTM i decided to try again, but to my disappointment it happened again, Windows 7 Blue screened while saving a Wave file as an MP3 in Soundbooth.
Adobe Support, another disappointment
Deciding I needed help I contacted Adobe support figuring they had a patch or at least could tell me what driver was causing the issue, usually Blue screen is caused by a driver issue. I sent them my mini dump file and all other information and got a prompt but disappointing reply:
Thank you for contacting Adobe® Web Support for assistance with Adobe Soundbooth® CS4.
I understand that when you attempt to use Soundbooth CS4 on your
Microsoft® Windows® 7# system, you receive blue screen errors.
Soundbooth CS4 was not designed to work on Windows 7 and it is not
supported on that operating system. Because of this, we cannot ensure
that Soundbooth with function predictably on Windows 7. There are many
things that could be going wrong, but, typically, blue screen errors
result from drivers that are either damaged or incompatible with the
operating system. You may be able to install more appropriate sound card
and graphics card drivers to see if that will help.
It is recommended, however, that you use a supported operating system,
like Windows Vista#, until we have had a chance to certify Windows 7.
I hope this information helps to resolve your issue. If you require
further assistance with this issue, please update your web case with
complete details, including what steps you have applied and any error
messages you are receiving
This really sad to me, Adobe has now had many months to test their product with our new operating system, but as with every company I understand their proprieties might not be focused there, so here I was stuck again without a resolution.
To be honest I did expect this reply to a degree, but hoped at least that they would point me in the right direction more then say it might be a driver issue of “some kind”. Its possible to use the Windows 7 SDK to look at a dump file and see what driver caused the crash, but they did not do this for me (and I didn't have the time to figure it out myself)
Internal Help and Solution found (I hope)
I finally decided to reach out internal to our great team of Windows 7 related professionals and within the day I had a response, my Network wireless driver on the laptop was crashing. I checked and found a new version by a few revisions and installed it.
After the upgrade (so far) I dont seem to be crashing anymore, i really hope I found the solution and perhaps my post here will help others.
Closing
My hope is that Adobe certifies this and all of their products with Windows 7 soon. I really enjoy Soundbooth and wish to be part of the “supported operating systems” circle once again soon.