marianna check your lock as i was still able to post

It looks to me that a lot of the upgrade dramas that I (and I bet some other XPro users) have been watching the forums about seems to be not necessarily bad code from Avid, but rather, an odd collection of computer reactions to the upgrade. These do seem to be fixable, with the right tech support- and once people are successfully upgraded- they all seem to be truly thrilled with the new product.

Since upgrading has so often caused problems in the past- I guess my big continuing question is-

how has tech support changed for you all since the New Thinking?

It looks obvious to me that if customer support HAS really changed- then Avid looks like it has a serious bonafide winner in MC 3! There's nothing that sells like the statement from a well-known and respected guy like tompearson- who after some upgrade drama- (fixed by Avid, not Avid's fault!)- seems very very happy with the new application!

I'm really pleased to see Avid do so well-

Ev

 Although this has been problem seems to be resolved, I had a similar experience with a different workaround. Seems bluetooth on my computer was causing the problem (both with an initial install of AXP and then a clean install of MC) went to device manager at the desktop level, disabled bluetooth, launched cleanly (no probs getting through autoconfig...) then exited and re-enabled bluetooth. Smooth sailing after that.

Just my two cents here: anyone reading my posts on this and the Xpress forum will pick up that I tend to be more supportive of Avid than not.  The last few postings in this thread sum up why this is the case.

In brief, in a long and chequered career for ten years I earned my living writing software.  Everything from embedded to systems work to Windows and Mac apps were grist to my mill.  So I understand that in the PC environment it can be very dificult guaranteeing compatibility with every installation of Windows.

A significant part of the Windows platform is third-party supplied software in the form of drivers.  Microsoft, while they issue guidelines, can't guarantee that every driver will perform reliably with any other driver or even with the OS itself.  Software suppliers inheret any instability due to driver conflicts and add another potential layer of problems of their own.  The more cutting edge that software is and the more direct control of hardware that it requires the more problems that it will have.

For this reason Avid supply their most cutting-edge prodiucts on turnkey systems.  This is really the only way to be 100% confident of stability.  Further, Avid recommends configurations for use with Media Composer, but even if you follow their recommendations to the letter you won't necessarily have a stable system.  Things like cameras and other unplanned components can break the stability of the software, and there's very little that Avid can do about it.  Hey, even a bad printer driver can stop you cold.

So next time you have a bad install bear in mind that Avid don't and can't have a table of the millions of possible hardware combinations that there are in the PC world.  They're slightly better off in terms of stability in the Mac world, but there they have problems with Apple's slow and poor support of developers, especially those they see as competitiors.  The fact that over the nearly twenty years of life of MC they've succeeded more often than not speaks volumes for the excellence of their product.

I reinstalled MC3, following all of Avid's advice in the readme to a 'T' and I'm happy to say it seems to be ticking like a clock now. Awesome update.

I agree with what jwrl wrote, too. Although I had troubles with the first attempt at upgrading, I had only myself to blame because I didn't make a mirror backup of my system first, and I was rushing, etc. Anyway. Newly installed update works like a charm. Fast, and stable (at least so far).

Chris

Just want to say thanks again to all who helped me solve this problem in a very timely fashion. When I returned a call to Avid tech they said they hadn't heard of holding down the Cand M keys before, so we helped educate an aparently new support person that can now better help someone else. Another reason these forums are so valuable. Thanks again to everyone!