I'm back, I'm back, I'm back!
Hours of backup, two reinstallations of the operating system, waiting for all of the Windows updates....and I finally realized what the problem was that started it all.
Duplicate files.
Let me explain.
My video software of choice is Corel's Video Studio V6 Ultimate. You can buy "plugins" that you add to VSV6 that give you the power to do different things with your movies or slideshow.
My goto company for these effects is NewBlueFX. There are "transitions" that do cool things when the video goes from one photo or video to the next one. And there are "special effects" that can do some really fun things with the videos. Like picture in picture. And there are the titles (if you've watched any of my YouTube videos, I've used NewBlue title for my logo in the video).
I've been getting the NewBlueFX plugins for years. And I've installed them all. My first one was a freebie that makes video look like it's a cartoon. I've been hooked ever since. I usually take advantage of their special discounts during the year, I won't buy unless I get a huge discount. August is the best month for their discounts, but they had a good one not that long ago, one for 40% off. They had recently added a new Essential set and I love those, I have every one. I used the discount for Essentials VII. At first, it wasn't compatible with Corel, but I knew they'd eventually change that, so I bought it anyway.
I found this little video over on the NewBlue website, it nicely showcases some of what their plugins can do.
Earlier this month, they came out with the update. I downloaded it last week. Monday, I think. Tried installing it on Tuesday and that's when the trouble began.
So, we have two companies. Corel and NewBlue. Well, Corel has some bonus software with the edition of the software I have. A couple from a company by the name of ProDAD and more from NewBlueFX. I had installed them all. I had installed all my other plugins. I had a lot of plugins. Well, when I installed NB VE VI yesterday afternoon, my Corel crashed. Again. So, after all the work I'd done this past week, and setting restore points after every addition, VideoStudio crashed when I installed Video Essentials VI.
Okay. I know it worked before last Tuesday. I opened up the files for it, had the open window on my desktop. I moved all of the new files to the desktop and started to put them back in one by one. Some didn't crash the program. Others did. I'd take out the ones that crashed it and I finally looked at the "library" thumbnails once Video Studio was running. There were duplicate plugins. Same name. This wasn't right.
I went through the list in the files and started moving one of the duplicate plugins to the desktop, out of the list.
And I was able to install everything once the duplicates were gone from the list.
What happened is the stuff that came with the Corel software had the same plugins that I'd already had from NewBlue. And it choked the program. Once I took the "bonus" features out, everything ran as it should.
A pretty simple fix. Too bad it took me over a week to figure it out.
NewBlue support was really helpful during all of this. When they didn't hear from me, they'd send an email wanting to know the progress. I liked this.
I'm still reinstalling programs, but at this point, I'm down to graphics. That will take a little time because some of the stuff is pretty old and I have to finesse it to get it to work.
My computer is clean, though. Real clean.