Saturday, August 3, 2013

Windows Movie Maker not working on Window 7 64-bit - SOLVED!!!


First of all, I apologise, this is not the right forum for an IT related blog post, but I do not have anywhere else to put it and I felt that after 2 days of struggling, I ought to write this up somewhere, to help others who have this problem.

I have recently upgraded my operating system to Window 7 64-bit Ultimate Edition. I was running on the 32-bit version previously and everything was hunky dory until my hard drive died and I needed a new hard drive and a re-build (another long story!!).

Since then, I have been progressively reinstalling software that I use regularly back onto the computer.

One of the programs (which is where this is sort of relevant to this blog) is Windows Movie Maker, which I use to edit my videos to upload to my youtube channel.

I know it's not the greatest program out there for movie editing, but it does what I need it to do and for my limited editing needs, it is sufficient.

Since I could not get Movie Maker to work, I tried buying Pinnacle (cost me $59.95) and instead of working, after I installed it, it wanted me to buy more software in order for it to even begin editing. Bah! I am going to return the software and get my money back!! Plus, it was complicated to use and I'm not prepared right now to invest in the program and the learning curve.

Then I found another free video editing software which was more advanced than Movie Maker, but when I tried to use it, the video and sound would not sync up and play seamlessly and it was not going well.

So, I persisted in trying to get Movie Maker working.

Originally, I had installed Movie Maker from Windows Essentials 2012.

I was getting this error message:

 "Sorry, Movie Maker can't start. Make sure your computer meets the minimum system requirements before trying to start Movie maker again, and then try to update the driver for your video card if Movie Maker still doesn't start." 

I then troubleshooted (is this a real word?) it and tried:

1. Updating drivers (but it looked like my drivers were up to date)
2. Installing Windows Movie Maker 6 (which didn't do what I wanted)

Then I found this forum which after reading through many posts and 3 pages of back and forth, claimed to have solved the problem.

The two things that I took away from the post was:

1. Install DriverMax to update all your drivers
2. Roll back to Windows Essentials 2011 for Movie Maker.

I bought DriverMax 30 day pro version for $10USD and used it to update about 20 out of date drivers on my computer. My computer is from 2006 and quite old, even though it has new RAM and a new HDD. I'm resisting spending $1500 on a brand new computer right now. Tyres on the car just cost $1250!!

After I updated the drivers, I rebooted the computer.

Then, I uninstalled Windows Essentials 2012 along with Movie Maker, and restarted the computer.

After that, I installed Windows Essentials 2011 Movie Maker. Movie Maker was the only program I selected to install.

Once it had installed, I launched Movie Maker, all the while holding my breath and lo and behold, instead of the error message, IT WORKED!!!

Happily, I've now got Movie Maker working back on my computer again. It's not the best movie editing software out there, but it's enough for my needs.

I sincerely hope this post helps others who have this problem as well.

ps. The only drawback from using 2011 instead of 2012 is that the videos save as WMV files instead of MP4 files, which means the file sizes are larger. It will take longer for my videos to upload, but I think I can live with that.

pps. I edited a video that I had previously edited in 2012 (I forgot I had done it before) and the result was - 2011 = 1.39Gb in a WMV file, 2012 = 400Gb in a MP4 file. That's a huge trade off in size. This will take me at least 5 times longer to upload to youtube.

I tried installing 2012 again on top of 2011, but 2012 would not work. Got the same error message, so it looks like I am stuck with 2011. :-( and :-) at the same time. 


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