Well, "thank pitchforks and pointed ears," (Dr. McCoy) I fixed Shockwave!

Gang,

If anyone's been watching with interest my (and many others') problem with Shockwave in Mozilla on XP, here's the fix! Why either Mozilla or Macromedia haven't worked this fix in is beyond me.

You need the act30pkg.exe download from Microsoft. The 2.0 version is on the XP cdrom, but I downloaded the newer version just in case. It's the application compatibility tool.

Install it. It will appear on the Start Menu. Inside, click the Fix icon to make a new fix. Fill in the info (file is mozilla.exe located in c:\program files\mozilla.org\mozilla\mozilla.exe, so just browse over to it). Choose the radio button for Windows 2000. On the next screen choose to deselect all and tell the warning box "OK" to continue. Now scroll down in the list to "LoadLibraryCWD," and check to select it. That's the process that needs to happen to get Shockwave to work, but the other 2000 mode changes aren't necessary so that's why you don't let Windows check them. The one that caused Mozilla not to work in 2000 compatibility mode with XPSP2 was "VirtualRegistry," but that won't be a problem now since we're deselecting all except the one we need for Shockwave.

Next, after you've finished going through the boxes and it closes, click the "X" to close the program and it will prompt you to name and save the new fix. I named the fix, "Mozilla Shockwave Fix," and then saved it with that name to the Mozilla folder.

But, we're not done yet because the fix must be registered so it will be applied everytime we open Mozilla. Go to Start, Run and browse to the saved fix file in the Mozilla folder. Choose that file, but don't open it yet! In the run box, click the mouse at the beginning of the file name and type in, "sdbinst," before it. (Of course, don't type my commas and quotation marks!) Now click open. If you did it right, an info box will appear saying the file was registered. At this point I rebooted the computer just in case.

Now, if you go ahead and run Mozilla you can go to the Shockwave test page and no longer be nagged to install the plugin that you know is installed correctly! Shockwave will work perfectly.

Even though I had McAfee VirusScan disabled when I installed the App compat program, McAfee's Script Stopper kept popping up warning of possible bad script activity. Just click, "allow whole script this time," every time you get the message box. Otherwise the program won't install right and you'll have problems.

I hope Mozlla and Macromedia tech's will somehow put this fix into whichever of the programs' it needs to be in. I really don't expect most folks to go through this procedure. I can't believe I figured it out. The latest post on the related Bugzilla thread just mentioned choosing that process in Compatibility Manager. Finding that there is no manual way to select individual parts of a comp mode with the XP wizard, I searched Microsoft for the App Compat tools and found that. Then, seeing it was over 20MB and I'm on dialup, I looked at the XP cd. Darn, it was the older version. So I bit the bullet and used GetRight to download the newer one. Then, even though the test worked within the manager, I couldn't get Mozilla to apply it when it opened so I checked the Comp manager's help file and found the instructions for running sdbinst to register the fix. Whew!

 

Hi Dennis, and congratulations on your great find!

Thanks so much for reporting back with this information, as it will be useful to other Windows XP and Shockwave users. Any chance you could give us some links for the download, and any other info you found?

Thanks again,

Ramona

 

I wish I had bookmarked it! However, it wasn't hard to find. I think I just searched Microsoft for Application Compatibility Tools.

I just went through my video card's fan dying, and therefore the video card. I'm lucky that I had made the "mistake" of buying a 3dfx Voodoo 5 5500 AGP back when I was getting ready to build my computer. This was back in August, 2001, and before I learned that Microsoft, though they were good enough to provide 2D drivers, nor anyone else at the time had really got a handle on making what was left from 3dfx's demise into working XP drivers. I then quickly got my Radeon 7500 (rest in peace) to build for XP.

Now, we have 3dfxzone.it. With the Amigamerlin 3.0 and MesaFX, so the old cards can live a little longer!

Of course, I live in South Florida. So the Hurricane interrupted me from my frustrating 2 reinstalls after finding that the version of VESA support (3.0) on the Voodoo, though better and nicer looking than what ATI provides (2.0), will not run my MS-DOS games on an NTFS drive. So, after reformatting and reinstalling XP and discovering this, I had to do it again and this time set up a dual boot with a 98 2nd edition partition as well as an XP NTFS one. With the Hurricane in the middle!

Then, I stupidly used my Sony MDR V-6 headphones raised a little off my ears because I could never get the SbLive's Dos Mode mixer to lower the volume. I need to use headphones because I've got a sound sensitive neighbor. I used to switch to speaker and lower the volume with the available volume control, but since I've gotten used to headphones I figured I'd see how I'd like it with the phones setting a little off the ears. Sounded fine, but the loud volume was too much for my ancient headphones. Now, sound is fine for normal stuff but any music listening is annoying because the left phone gets scratchy on the bass end. Now I have to shop for new headphones!

At least I'm back up. And now I can use Shockwave with Mozilla on XP SP2, as well. Life is good. And all this hobby stuff is relatively stupid when considering what some folks down here went through this week. I just lost power for a couple of days, but others lost a heck of a lot more. That stuff is real. And, I'll tell you, it makes me just grin and bear it when little computer bugs hit. This is just playin'.