FIX: You may experience issues when you use Windows Media Encoder 9 Series on a computer that is running Windows Vista

When you use Microsoft Windows Media Encoder (WME) 9 Series on a computer that is running Windows Vista, you may experience the following issues.

Issue 1

When you run the Windows Media Encoder command-line script WMCmd.vbs, the script host Cscript.exe may crash.

Issue 2

The icons that appear on the encoder toolbar and in the encoder dialog boxes are displayed by using a low bit depth. Therefore, the icons appear to have a low resolution.

Issue 3

When you configure the encoding profile or start an encoding session, the encoder may crash.

Download information

The following file is available for download from the Microsoft Download Center:
For more information about how to download Microsoft support files, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: Microsoft scanned this file for viruses. Microsoft used the most current virus-detection software that was available on the date that the file was posted. The file is stored on security-enhanced servers that help prevent any unauthorized changes to the file.

File information

The English version of this hotfix has the file attributes (or later file attributes) that are listed in the following table. The dates and times for these files are listed in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). When you view the file information, it is converted to local time. To find the difference between UTC and local time, use the Time Zone tab in the Date and Time item in Control Panel.

The 64-bit version of Windows Media Encoder has been updated so that you can install the encoder on the 64-bit version of Windows Vista. This updated version of the encoder includes the fixes that are described in this article. To obtain the updated version of the encoder, visit the following Microsoft Web site: Note To apply this hotfix on a computer that is running Windows Vista, you must have elevated user rights. We recommend that you right-click the hotfix package executable file and then click Run as administrator. Alternatively, you can run the executable file through a console window that has elevated user rights.

Before and after you install the hotfix, check the version number of the Wmenc file and of the WMEncEng.dll file to make sure that these files are updated. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
2. Double-click Programs and Features.
3. Remove Security Update for Windows Media Encoder (KB954156).
4. Remove the current installation of Windows Media Encoder 9 Series.
5. Restart the system. Do not install updates.
6. Reinstall the Windows Media Encoder 9 Series. To do this, visit the following Microsoft Web site:
   http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=5691ba02-e496-465a-bba9-b2f1182cdf24&displaylang=en&Hash=Q7YOichtn5uaPziFse1ENeP0pr3Zm3uDvElbQn2p9UGArhz5hMZIta1wqWhKm7czKB%2bzqI%2fM7a20p1YBh%2fuqIg%3d%3d (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=5691ba02-e496-465a-bba9-b2f1182cdf24&displaylang=en&Hash=Q7YOichtn5uaPziFse1ENeP0pr3Zm3uDvElbQn2p9UGArhz5hMZIta1wqWhKm7czKB%2bzqI%2fM7a20p1YBh%2fuqIg%3d%3d)
7. Verify that the version number for the Wmenc file and for theWMEncEng.dll file is 9.0.0.2980.
8. Install the hotfix that this article describes.
9. Verify that the version number for the Wmenc file and for theWMEncEng.dll file is 9.0.0.3352.
10. Use Windows Update to reinstall security updates.
11. Verify that the version number for the encoder files is still 9.0.0.3352.