Tech support issue for Album Art Fixer

I had an email exchange today with a user of Album Art Fixer. Because others may run into the same Windows issues, I thought I'd share the story here in the hopes of saving some frustration for Album Art Fixer users.

Her email:

1. In Windows 7, your help files don’t work.

2. Your default security settings have now made it impossible for me to modify any of my music files. How do I undo this?

3. The software page is on a blog - there’s no way to get an email to you; only public comments are allowed, and then only if I want to expose myself to Google, or some other public networking service.

My response:

I'm sorry you're having problem with the program. It doesn't set any security settings for any music files. The culprit here would likely be something else.

If you haven't followed the instructions to put a secondary account into the Backup Operators group before changing the security then you might have locked out access to your album art image files only. In this case, simply add your normal user account to the Backup Operators security group and log off and log back on (or reboot). Now your normal account will have access to the image files. This isn't really the best solution, though. The best solution is to make a new account on your PC without administrative permissions. Add that new account to the Backup Operators group. Log in as the new account and you'll have full access to your pictures. When you're done making changes that you want to the pictures, simply log off as the new account and log back into your normal account. The whole idea here is that to protect your album art images from WMP 12, you must make sure your normal account doesn't have access to change those images.

Alternatively, and much less desirable and much more risky, you can fix this by logging into your PC as the administrator or opening Explorer in an elevated administrator account and then take ownership of the files. From there you can restore the permissions. If you read this page carefully, ignoring all the ads on it, it might help: http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/05/25/how-to-take-ownership-and-grant-permissions-in-windows-vista/.

The problem with the help file isn't with Windows 7. The issue here would apply to any version of Windows. By default, when you download CHM help files (that's the file extension for this particular Microsoft format for help files) from the Internet, Windows blocks access to the file. This is because there were serious security flaws in early versions of the help file format (after all, this is Microsoft Windows where security flaws abound). To get past this Windows restriction, right-click on the CHM file and choose Properties. On the properties window, click the Unblock button and then click OK. Now when you open the file it should display the help content.

I hope this helps you.

Note: My name is Dale. You can see my domain name at the top of this page. Figure it out. You can reach me if you really need to; she did.

Then a second email from the user:

BTW - the CHM Help file didn’t work on my Vista laptop, either. I spent a while researching the old help reader utility that Microsoft no longer bundles with Vista or Win7, but even downloading and installing that program wouldn’t let me read your Help file.

So I dug out my 10-year-old Vaio Picturebook and fired it up. WinXP really overpowers it, but I was able to put it on my LAN, read the Help file, and print it out. Eureka.

OK, NOW I know how Album Art Fixer is supposed to work. And yes, indeed, it performed as advertised. First pass went smoothly, then it was locked out from further changes, as designed. I’ll revise my user groups and try it again.

Now all we need to do is to convince Microsoft to put Advanced Tag Editor back into the Win7 version of WMP.

Because I had already given the user the instructions on how to make the CHM help file work on her Windows 7 PC, I didn't respond to the statement about the help file so I will respond to that here and share this link with her for more information.

It wasn't necessary for this user to dig out her 10 year-old laptop to open the CHM file - though I have to admire her resolve to overcome the Windows restriction on CHM files downloaded from the Internet, even if she took the hard way to resolve it. The reason it worked on her 10 year old laptop is that it did not have any of the security patches that restrict CHM file access. Even with those patches, the file will open just fine after following the instructions above. For more information on this issue from Microsoft go to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896054. This article is about Windows Server 2003 but the same security update, KB896358, applies to all versions of Windows and the fix described in this article applies to all versions of Windows. The problem exists only on CHM files downloaded from the Internet. If I were to send you a CD with the same CHM file on it, it would open without any problem.

At first, I misunderstood her email, thinking she was saying that the help format I used was no longer supported by Microsoft. Rereading it, I realized that what she said was that she even tried downloading some unnamed old version help reader (perhaps WinHelp?) in order to try to view the CHM file. I'm sure that reading the file on her 10 year old PC might have made her think it was an old help format.

Just to make sure it's clear: support for CHM help files is included with Windows Vista and Windows 7. In fact, there are over 150 CHM help files installed on my Windows 7 X64 PC as part of the Windows installation including help on many previously existing Windows features. But there are also CHM help files installed that are the only available help files for features new in Windows 7, such as the AppLocker feature available only in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Clearly Microsoft is still supporting CHM help because they produced a lot of it for Windows 7.

Microsoft has introduced a new help system, Help 2.0, sometimes known as Document Explorer, that all users of Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 are familiar with. It is not designed or licensed for general help creation and cannot be redistributed to users that do not have Visual Studio installed. You can read in the following link that the CHM help format is the current help system for Windows and Help 2.0 is restricted to Visual Studio and Visual Studio related help systems.

http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.helpauthoring&tid=41461a10-6aec-407e-9959-8f4703edd750&cat=en_US_40611250-1604-443c-8787-ea86cc64ae4e&lang=en&cr=US&sloc=&p=1

The lesson here is to read the help files for Album Art Fixer before you run the program. It's not really that long; you can do it. And if the help files don't open, follow the steps outlined above.
- posted by Dale Preston @ 11/06/2009 11:30:00 PM