Vista Codec Pack V5.7.9 (yes, it works on Windows XP)

[mr_smartepants]

the window providing some status message had all square boxes for me (instead of characters) except for the number that was counting down.

Shark's own installer does this too.
Thanks for the fix dumpydooby.

[bphlpt]

Seeing that Shark has updated his package to v5.6.3 has prompted me to finally get around to ask some rather dumb questions I've always wondered about. I know, I think, that you need to have either QuickTime or QuickTime Alternative installed in addition to this package in order to be prepared to play all, or most, of the media out there. But do you also need Real or Real Alternative? I've seen that if you DO have Real that you need to NOT install the Real portion of this package, but does that apply to Real Alternative, too? How about DivX or Xvid? Any advantage to having them besides then having access to yet another media player? If you do have them, should you then not install some other portion of this package? Thanks in advance for the advice. Media codecs are very complicated to me...

Cheers and Regards

[dumpydooby]

Shark is definitely better equipped to answer your questions. I personally install this pack as well as my own or RogueSpear's releases of Real Alternative and QuickTime Alternative. As for installing the DivX Player, that's unnecessary. You can still get the DivX Web Player if you require that (it's a browser plug-in). Also, I wanna add that if your primary media player is VLC, then this pack is unnecessary because VLC uses internal codecs.


In terms of clarifying the confusion with codecs. You can think of how 7-zip, WinRar, WinZip can all compress and decompress zip archives. They all use their own codecs to do it. But sometimes you want WinRAR to be the program to open RAR files, but 7-zip takes over or some such other thing. Video codecs work very similarly. What Shark does is assemble a collection of video codecs and registers them. He makes sure that there are no conflicts between his codecs, and he unregisters codecs that conflict with his codecs prior to installation (and I believe there's a setting to do this as well).

[bphlpt]

Thanks for the suggestion, dumpydooby. And this point? (Sorry to be a pest)

I've seen that if you DO have Real that you need to NOT install the Real portion of this package, but does that apply to Real Alternative, too?

If your versions of the two Alternative packages are more up to date than RogueSpear's, I admit I haven't checked his out lately, would you mind sharing?

I really respect Shark's work, and yours for enhancing it!

Thanks again in advance.

Cheers and Regards

[RogueSpear]

Regarding Real. I'm likely to discontinue my installer completely. I've not only stopped installing it, but I've actually yanked it out of every workstation I've touched lately. Nobody uses it anymore, I don't think anyone is actively developing it anymore, and it only serves to increase your attack surface.

[bphlpt]

@dumpydooby - You probably missed this follow-on question.

Thanks for the suggestion, dumpydooby. And this point? (Sorry to be a pest)

I've seen that if you DO have Real that you need to NOT install the Real portion of this package, but does that apply to Real Alternative, too?

If your versions of the two Alternative packages are more up to date than RogueSpear's, I admit I haven't checked his out lately, would you mind sharing?

I really respect Shark's work, and yours for enhancing it!

As an aside, have you checked out vmanda's work over at Ryan's regarding his Real Alternative Lite and QuickTime Alternative Lite, and the Silent Install Maker for them? - http://www.ryanvm.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6781.

Cheers and Regards

[mr_smartepants]

Shark007 updated his installer to 5.7.5.
Just an FYI. Great job on these BTW.

[dumpydooby]

lol. I was trying to post in this thread earlier to let you guys know I updated it, but -- no joke -- as I was typing my post, the battery in my laptop died. Anyhoo, it's all up to date ... for the moment.

[kiki burgh]

been a while for me ... as always, appreciate this.

hmm ... got this:
Oops! This link appears to be broken.
going to the xpdnc.org showed:
Site Temporarily Unavailable

[dumpydooby]

Host is having some trouble. I'm working on relocating. It could be as much as a week or more before I'm back up and running.

[dumpydooby]

20100728 - Updated to 5.7.9

[mr_smartepants]

I just got done with an install and this installer leaves behind the folder c:\windows\temp\doitrightconsulting\* with all the files.
I didn't know if that was intended behavior or not.

[dumpydooby]

Well normally the files are left in %appdata% (this is intentional behavior of shark's InstallShield executable setup file), but during setup that means it would be in the Default User's app data folder, which means that it would be copied every time a new account is created.

So I figured I'd still leave the setup files on the system, but in a temp folder that users can optionally delete if they want. I suppose I can add a switch to make it delete the folder on next reboot.