Aliens ate my GUI

I’m currently setting up a trancode farm using Rhozet CarbonCoder. What a great piece of software this is and a dream to configure and use when compared with FlipFactory. And it’s very cheap!

However, it requires QuickTime to run – no problem I thought – but you try installing and running QuickTime v7.6 on Windows Server 2003 SP1. It installs fine, but absolutely refuses to run, unhelpfully telling you…

QuickTime failed to initialize (error -2096).

A quick search reveals it may be a compatibility issue. There is an article indicating that turning off Compatibility mode would resolve this issue, but Compatibility mode is not turned on for iTunes or QuickTime.

The same issue is discussed in the Quicktime forum, here:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6400305

I struggled for a couple of hours, frustrated by something seemingly so simple stopping me doing what I needed to do – as usual in a hurry. I lost count of how many times I installed and then uninstalled QuickTime and CarbonCoder. I even resorted to cleaning the registry of any refernces to QT.

I eventually gave up and decided to go home. As I was walking out I realized I hadn’t actually tried installing an older version. I quickly grabbed v7.2 from the Apple site and – hey presto – it worked.

Now the point of all this really is the Apple support forum driving me mad. Yes, there’s an article posted there with a few replies http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6595367 but it’s been archived (so no replies) so now I can’t post my conclusive findings.

On the one hand I think Apple is great compared with Microsoft. On the other I think they are just as bad as each other. I guess the wind is blowing and it changed my mind for the day.