Activating Microsoft Reader on a Windows Mobile 5 device under Vista

22. October 2008
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I recently tried to use Microsoft reader on my iMate K-Jam mobile, it's Windows Mobile 5 powered, so according to Microsoft it's fully supported. However, when I tried to activate, I got the following error:

"You have an older version of Pocket PC which does not support Activation"

Not true I cried, and after a lot of Google-ing and trying various different fixes that are posted on the net, I found the only one that actually worked for me!

It was as simple as adding the activation web site to the "Trusted Sites" zone in Internet Explorer, and running IE in the administrators context. It was one of those simple ones that really makes the 2 hours spent searching for an answer all the more frustrating.

I've got a feeling Microsoft should add notes to that effect on the site...never mind.

Digital music, Windows Mobile, Windows Vista , , , , ,

iTunes crashes on startup under Vista

12. July 2007
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I had an odd problem today, I logged on to begin my day’s work and plugged in my iPod as per normal. iTunes crashes, Vista tries to recover. iTunes closes. iTunes opens. iTunes crashes. Vista tries to recover.

As you can imagine that gets tiresome, so I tried repairing iTunes, reinstalling iTunes, installing older versions of iTunes, all to no avail. The solution in the end was to remove Quicktime and do a fresh install. I’ve not managed to find what caused the crash, so I’m assuming Quicktime has corrupted somehow. It’s possible the Apple Software Update was trying to upgrade it an crashed leaving it in a non-running state - but that’s just speculation.

Digital music, Windows Vista , ,

DRM Free iTunes music with QTFairUse

15. June 2007
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I’m not going to go into the rights and wrongs of DRM, I will say that I’m strongly against piracy and if your intention is to strip DRM for those kind of reasons, kindly go somewhere else for your info. If you’re wanting to strip DRM for a legitimate personal use, such as playing in another media player or an MP3 player other than an iPod - read on!

 QuickTimeFairUse is a great little application that takes your .m4p protected iTunes files and captures the decrypted data directly from the memory of your computer. This means that there’s no loss of quality at all from the process! The captured AAC data is then re-compressed into an .m4a unprotected file. That’s not the only benefit either, QTFairUse will also modify your iTunes library to point to the new .m4a file - including keeping all the metadata, album art and play information, so if you’re like me and have dynamic playlists generated by most played or five star rated it will keep them happy! It will back up your .m4p files and library too, so if something goes wrong you can easily revert back - not that I’ve ever had to. It’s also faster than real-time, it takes 5-15 seconds per song on my laptop with plenty of RAM.

The current download version does not support iTunes 7.2.0 (the latest one) so you’ll need to open the config file QTFairUse6.cfg and add the following to the end:

[Version8]
Desc=7.2.0
DebugCheck=0×4DE385
FrameCopy=0×826130
EndOfTrack=0×50E1D0
SndOut=0×5131D7,EB
LoopStart=0×651531
LoopCopy=0×6515E5
LoopEnd=0×651864
LoopPatch=0×651860,52

Once you’ve done that, run QTFairUse.exe and select the options that you require. You can scan your entire library or drag and drop files into the window. I don’t change any of the default settings because, well they’re great. The only thing I change is the location of the backup to a folder in My Music called M4P Backup.

Digital music , ,