Sonic has assimilated Roxio; Sonic's name appears in Roxio products since
the merger, at times.
The DLA issue has been a big mess, as there was no problem until Microsoft
issued a day 0 "fix" that made about 20? programs more compatible with
Vista - and yet marked the DLA driver Roxio (written by Sonic) as a "bad
driver." For many it causes non-stop "bad driver" error messages, and they
keep coming back. I don't know if this driver is used by anyone other than
Easy Media Creator 9, but it seems particularly difficult to get rid of. I
just installed the program and didn't see the message, though - I deselected
via custom install a lot of items in Easy Whatever that I don't use, and
BEFORE rebooting got rid of drag to disc - I think this is where the driver
gets installed. Fingers and toes crossed, this install won't be
problematical because I did remove drag-to-disc before rebooting after
install. Seems Roxio doesn't think much of MS doing a day 0 poatch (1/31)
that broke their program that DID work before the patch. There is also an
MSKB article that shows steps to remove the patch from MS, for now.
You can read up on this on the Roxio message boards, look for support for
Easy Media Creator 9 - it was supposed to be Vista compliant. Now they are
going to evidently take their customer's good nature for granted and take
until April to release 9.1, at least that's what I saw in the support board
at roxio.com.
If your Dell came with Roxio burning software, by all means call Dell. I
believe they have a file that will banish this troublesome driver for you.
Roxio takes the stance that it's a "harmless" driver warning, however it
caused MSMAIL on my machine to stay resident in memory after being closed
(and so it wouldn't reopen unless the machine was rebooted). It also caused
Forte Agent Newsreader (no, don't use it often) to download everything at a
crawl - even just headers were slow. Removed all of Easy Whatever 9 and
both programs behaved normally.
From all I've read of this, Dell has the answer for when you're already
getting the message in the form of a file (15 megs, don't know why so big)
that uninstalls the bad driver and other programs that were dependent on it
(like drag to disk).
I don't have a Dell, but if you can't find this, at least check in the
message forums at roxio - the patch has been mentioned and the URL given.
It is likely Dell has Roxio s/w installed (and if Roxio is installed, then
Sonic is as well).
Not many definitive answers around here about ANYTHING, frustrating, when
you're having problems. Calling MS support has only resulted in 4 1/2 hours
on the phone, most of them spent on hold; and their "bottom line" was to get
rid of this driver or the whole program, or whatever, but it was NOT A
MICROSOFT PROBLEM. Makes me feel like recommending Vista to all my friends
(not). I hate to admit they (MS) were right, but removing Easy Media
Creator 9 put my computer back to perfect working condition.
I ran out of room for my last good XP image and had to erase it, else I'd be
going back to it for awhile. I thought this time would be different; with
the long lead times for Vista I thought s/w houses would have their stuff in
order THIS TIME (never has happened before, but I thought maybe THIS TIME).
I was wrong. I'm also waiting on Hewlitt Packard to release it's
comprehensive s/w package that goes along with my 7210 all-in-one printer.
I wonder how long it will be...
Bill Halvorsen
