The download mangler strikes again

2

Comments

  • ...and my attempt at humor back :-).
    Sounds like I should give emusic/J a spin. I've been meaning to for a while, but held back a little by the fear of getting a bad download and removing the current hope of emu CS refunding the credit.
  • After having some wonky experiences w/ eMu's DLM a year to two ago I switched to using eMuisc/J on my windows XP machine. This past September I got a new win7/64-bit based PC and used the newest version of eMuisc/J on that to download my last month of subscription tracks without incident. eMuisc/J just plain worked and that is all I wanted/needed.
  • edited March 2011
    I am now officially a non dweeb

    Looking back at the history in my Download Mangler all of the tracks have a play button beside that them that when clicked will cause the track to play in WMP. However two tracks have the word "expired" where the play button icon should be.

    WTF is that about?
  • Probably either (a) that the artist has expired and so can no longer sing inside your PC or (b) that it thinks you have expired of old age waiting for the bugs to be fixed or (c) the window of time during which it was cool to listen to that track has expired.
  • edited March 2011
    Hmm... I've got one too, a Daily Download track called "Ancient Robots" by Conspiracy of Owls. I probably deleted it myself long before it "expired," and if I hadn't I would have moved it into a different folder, unless it "expired" within 2-3 weeks of it being downloaded. But I can't say I specifically remember moving or deleting it.

    If DLM is deleting data files off people's hard drives without asking, that could be a fairly serious black eye for them - even if it's within their ToS (and the copyright-holder's rights) to allow them to do so. That's what you call "poor software behavior."
  • Since the two tunes in question are respectively Hot House and On Green Dolphin Street that eliminates option C

    And since, as far as I can tell, Dave Pike is still living that eliminates option A

    Therefore option B is the correct answer.

    Process of elimination, I still got it, this is how I aced the SAT
  • Is it ever not time for Dave Pike?

    Yikes, that album is as old as I am. I should get a copy of the original vinyl LP and see if I can set up some sort of Picture of Dorian Gray situation.
  • I am still looking for Pike's Peak. It is out of print but I thought I had cobbled several tracks together from other sources but I cannot find it on my hard drive at the moment.

    Bummer
  • Well, if you're the sort of person who downloads from blogsharers, you could always go that route I suppose. It's less of an ethical problem when it's an older album and it's been out of print for a while.
  • Doesn't sound like my kind of thing

    Bill Evans played piano on Pike's Peak and I had a couple of the songs from that album on a Bill Evans comp but I can't find it now

    Hmmmm
  • Therefore option B is the correct answer.
    Glad we solved that. That was easy.
    That's what you call "poor software behavior."
    The DLM is seriously in need of some behavior modification therapy.
  • edited March 2011
    It's likely of no consolation but the dev is MrTech an all around good guy who in the past has been more than helpful in answering my questions about his projects including the DLM. That said, the last commits appear to be well over a year ago so I'm fairly certain his contract with eMu has expired.
  • fairly certain his contract with eMu has expired
    That would fit. It gives every appearance of something they had developed for them and now are trying to just maintain without any real further work on it.
  • Which, in my frank opinion, is pretty damn shortsighted given that it is one of the most critical pieces in their delivery mechanism.

    /armchair CEO
  • Well CS just gave me a smidgeon of courtesy credit in compensation for my pain with the DLM meltdown and gave me a bunch of suggestions that are pretty much covered in what I already told them. My patience is wearing thin with being asked each time I hear back from CS for information that I have clearly given them earlier in the conversation. (E.g. when I wrote to them about the meltdown I told them that I had turned off syncing with Windows Media Player this time since that appeared to be causing problems the first time round; one of the questions in reply: "What media player is the download manager syncing to?" One needs the patience of a saint for a conversation of this nature - it's like talking to an elderly relative who can never remember the thing you said before last. Except I might have more love for the elderly relative to carry me through. Sigh.
  • edited March 2011
    Over the weekend I was getting CS responses within hours. Now that I think I have got to the point where I've received all the variants on the cut-and-paste advice for dummies and have told them it's still not working (with detailed reports of more bizarre behavior from the DLM) there's been a two day silence. Hopefully someone's doing some research rather than just giving up. It might interest/edify you all to know that uninstalling the Emu DLM AND manually deleting the installation folder does not uninstall the DLM. I've done it twice, and the old version still launches with the same old list of broken downloads if I launch from the icon. Bizarrely, the new version, without the list of past downloads, launches if I trigger the DLM by starting a download. Except if the DLM is already open - then nothing happens at all if I trigger a download. Not that this latter is likely very interesting - I just thought it should be public knowledge that the Emu DLM does not uninstall properly.
  • edited March 2011
    @Germanprof, if this is Windows, what version of Windows is it? On Vista and Win7, the download data is stored in the "Users hive." So in my case, it's...

    C:\Users\Scissorman\AppData\Roaming\eMusic\eMusic Download Manager\Profiles\t7gi63i.default\

    That's where the bad data files are - uninstalling the program itself, as you've seen, does no good. Whereas, if you deleted everything in the folder above (or maybe just moved it somewhere else), then it would look like a fresh install.
  • edited March 2011
    Ah, thanks, that's better help than the latest from CS. I'll try that this evening. I am on Win 7. CS keeps throwing additional courtesy credit at me and then making generic suggestions about trying rebooting or making sure I am saving to the right folder, leaving me grateful for the free money but wishing the help sounded more expert.
  • Probably useless tip: on my formerly hinky computer, DLM ran better if I opened it before trying DL. But that problem has cleared up since RAM upgrade.
  • edited March 2011
    Not a download problem with emusic, but still a problem! Three days ago I emailed emusic to change my nickname to the one I use here. Got the standard reply from CS. Then today I wanted to reply to Brighternow on the Oops thread there, to say his link is still not working. Couldn't do so, because I have no nickname - so checked my email. They, CS, don't like greg - someone already has it. Fair enough, but why take off my existing nickname until they have a new one? The only way I can add a new one is to email CS. Is it a way of keeping me off their message board? I'll now get the standard CS reply and it will take another two days until they reply again.....at least they have not stopped me downloading.
  • Next time, ask them for "Super Greg." Or if they don't have that, maybe "Superlative Greg," "Sooper Greg," or "Soupy Greg." Just don't settle for "Subpar Greg" or "Supper Greg," because those don't have that certain, you know, je ne sais quoi.
  • I've gone for gregc. When I first signed up I didn't really realise the purpose of the nickname so just used my name. Working in an environment, a university, where students know my name well I decided I really ought to anonomise it a bit - hence my name here. I've been intending doing it for a while but got round to it earlier this week. It now seems to have defaulted to a long string of letters and numbers - I certainly don't want that - it is probably my membership number or something like that. I'm sure it 'll get sorted out eventually. I can live without posting there for a few days!
  • "Gregc"? That's even worse! People will think you're a Gregorian Chant fan or something! Next thing you know, you'll be playing Sing Along With The Pope and dressing up like somebody from a bad 80's sci-fi movie.

    61ZdNmUI6YL._SL500_AA300_.jpg
  • I'm quite happy with it - it is close to my name here!
  • Back in high school I worked at a Mailboxes, Etc. type place (lots of copiers, shipping supplies, mailboxes... etc.). One of the guys had to go to a postal convention. The form had a required spot for title. Since we were all just "employees" he had to make one up. Several weeks later he started getting mail for "Grand Poobah Dave".
  • edited March 2011
    Funny. I chose Germanprof 6 years ago when I signed up to emusic for no other reason than I thought I might be able to remember it myself when logging in. I had no thought in my head about discussion boards (don't think I had ever used one) or of anyone other than me seeing the user name - it was just a log-in that I could remember. When I came over here I kept it for continuity since I had begun posting on the emusic board with it and some of the same folk are in those discussions. But it was not until seeing the various reactions to it here (various riffs on things German- or Godwin's-Law-related) that I ever really thought about it much as having public meaning or communicating a certain profile. How naive.

    By the way, still locked in battle with CS - thanks to Scissorman I was able to get a clean reinstall of the DLM - and now it works on new albums but crashes on redownloads of failed album downloads. Two conclusions on my part so far: 1. it was not properly updated for Windows 7 (it does not look all the places it should when uninstalling) and 2. it was not properly updated for their new redownload monitoring system. (And 3: it's just crap).
  • Germanprof . . .
    I sacked WMP about two years ago and changed to Winamp.
    - Everything, the sync, the library, the search and the handling of other filetypes than mp3 (eg. flac) works so much better than WMP, IMO.
  • Might try that again - last time I tried Winamp I didn't warm to the interface, but that was a while back. I still need someone to design the perfect media player :-).
    Either way, in all my DLM trials over the last few days I have had sync disabled, so that shouldn't be the issue any more (though it was the initial presenting problem).
  • My nickname saga continues. CS have now changed me to the name I originally had, that I was trying to stop using. They are saying that is the one change I am allowed!! Seems illogical to me, as I wanted to get away from using my full name. Like germanprof when I signed up for emusic I was never aware that my nickname would be used in the way it has been - I just used the first part of both my work and home email addresses so I could remember it. I use that as my usewr name in a variety of contexts to log in. If they won't change it again, I se an email to someone senior in emusic coming up - not that it is likely to achieve much....
  • See? If you'd gone with "Super Greg" like I suggested, they would have been intimidated by your super-ness and probably would have just done whatever you wanted.
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