Howdy,

For those that don't know me, I've got pretty extensive experience within multimedia, and have generally been debugging multimedia issues for a long time now. I don't expect any of you to have already known anything I'm saying because this is a crazy complex world. Any of you who are into codecs and multimedia probably already know that. There's no shame in not knowing something, and for those of you who *are* well-versed, nothing I'm saying should be any surprise.

Right now the top two crashes for WMP Vista are in old versions of FFDShow and MMSwitch. I think this site is directly contributing to that problem, and it'd be great to get that fixed up.

* Please stop distributing or recommending anything that's redistributing Morgan Multimedia Stream Switcher (mmswitch.ax). That blows up on EnumPins in DirectShow. Everybody knew that was crashing years ago, yet I'm seeing it in these places:
-- Morgan Multimedia download
-- Ace Mega
-- DivX Total Pack
-- BoliGego Codec
-- Codec Pack All in 1
-- Gordian Knot
-- MUSK codec pack
-- Nimo Codec Pack Lite
-- Nimo Codec Pack
-- SLD Codec Pack
-- The Codecs

* Please stop redistributing anything including Voxware. That'll cause memory corruptions on ACMEnumerate:
-- Storm Codec
-- Ace Mega
(Run under the debugger and you should notice this.) Y'all already have a standalone link to Voxware here. I would probably preface that (as well as the links for Morgan Multimedia) with a warning that there are known issues with the codec, and that's definitely "use at your own risk".

* Please stop redistributing anything with old versions of FFDShow. People need to update their "packs" to have FFDShow Tryouts Beta 3 (July 2007) or newer.
-- Matroska.
-- Defiler
-- HelDecPack (2004 version!)
-- Tzim's Codec Pack
-- XP Codec Pack (2004 version!)
-- The Codecs Lite (2003 version ftw)
You've got the same problem with older versions of DivX (wcslen( 0 ) is bad), but people are generally better about being smart about DivX than they are about FFDShow.

Anyways, I keep seeing user crashes in the above mentioned components, and they end up pointing out that they're getting this crapware from your site. If you could please clean your site of the above nastyware, all the end users out there would really benefit.

All I'm trying to do is to keep Windows multimedia stable and end users from crashing. I hope you're willing to help with that. Regardless of whether you want to use Media Player Classic, GOMPlayer, ZPlayer, WinAMP, whatever - your system is better off without any of the above nastyware on your box.

The problem is exacerbated because Windows doesn't really have a fully functional codec or filter uninstall system, and only allows the end user to really easily view installed VfW codecs. Installed DirectShow filters can't be viewed without special tools. WMP11's Help:About:Technical Support Information web tool is kind of useful, but that's only a segment of the data of interest. Putting bad codecs or filters on the system puts the end user into a world of hurt.

Thanks for your time,
-Zach

EDIT: Updated afflicted packages

Seriously? Can we plllleeeease clean that nastyware off the site? What would it take to make that happen? Free-codecs.com is scary and dangerous to me right now.

Zach are you replying yourself?

Sorry, but not everything you said in the first post is true... and of course the site isn't dangerous as long as you don't install all the software it lists in one PC

I kinda have to agree with zachdms. There are a few ancient packs listed on the website that do more harm than good. Maybe the old ones that are no longer maintained should be removed?

Yeah, I was replying to myself because an issue critical to the multimedia community was being ignored. I really care about making people's PCs work, because otherwise they get mad at me as they mistake the cause. Hi, I work at Microsoft in multimedia. *waves* I speak for myself only here and I'm here simply because I want to stop people's machines from breaking, and this site is indirectly responsible for a big chunk of people's failures.

What's not true about it? I explicitly identified a bunch of nasty packages the site was hosting that I've identified as hosing people's machines. Could you clarify my specific errors? I'm often wrong, but at the same time - most codec packages rip off my work, so it's not like I'm a noob here. Those corporations can handle those legal issues, I'm explicitly and solely interested here in simply stopping avoidable crashes, and the identified packages all have grievious issues. I've just spent a lot of time debugging, following up on, and otherwise identifying the problems I pointed out. I figured maybe you could help me stop that trash from getting distributed and point people instead to stuff that won't break their system.

I respect what you're trying to do, and figure that cleaning out the nastiness will help you provide a much more useful less dangerous site.

For example: today I sent 100 emails today to people reselling a Vista-breaking piece of software that I had previously worked with a vendor to take off the market (they fixed the bug in their 2007 release): there's nothing in this for me but keeping people's machines stable, but then again that's all that I want. Tomorrow I'll probably follow up with some digital camera vendors that are writing slightly munged RIFF (AVI). You and I both win if people have a great multimedia experience, so if you could please work with me to make that happen, I would love it.

Any updates? I just was dealing with users who were crashing due to the awful Storm codec pack installing the bad Voxware codec. That's such an avoidable crash: just get rid of the bad codec packs and you're not really losing anything of value.

Could you clarify what I said in my first post that wasn't true? Here are my contentions:
* Morgan Multimedia Stream Switcher (aka MMSwitch) - can crash any program using DirectShow (EnumPins / EnumFilter bug in their filter)
* Voxware MetaSound - will cause memory corruption on any application using sound, especially horrible on Vista (breaks Outlook, Remote Desktop, etc)
* 3ivX - known security hole
* AngelPotion - generally the worst hack codec ever written - corrupts playback
* Ligos MPEG codecs (such as lmpgspl.ax) - should not be installed to Vista
* Indeo Audio Codec (iac25_32.ax) - crashes when queried about MPEG2 support, do not use on Vista: breaks DVDMaker

Given that you accept any of those - and we can talk about what you're doubtful of - it would seem that hosting these codec packs is doing a major disservice to users:
* Ace Mega Codec Packs (installs MMSwitch, Voxware, DivX 5.2, old FFDShow, Indeo Audio
Codec, and 3ivx)
* AVI Codec pack (installs 3ivX)
* BoliGego Codec (worst pack installs AngelPotion, MMSwitch, and 3ivx)
* Codec Pack All in 1 (installs MMSwitch)
* Defiler (uses an old buggy FFDShow version)
* DelDecPack (uses an old buggy FFDShow version)
* DivX Total Pack (installs MMSwitch)
* DJBCP Codec Pack (install MMSwitch)
* Gordian Knot (installs MMSwitch)
* current K-Lite Mega Codec Pack (installs Indeo Audio Codec to Vista)
* Matroska (uses an old buggy FFDShow version)
* MUSK codec pack (installs MMSwitch and 3ivx)
* Nimo Codec Pack (installs MMSwitch and 3ivx)
* Nimo Codec Pack lite (installs MMSwitch)
* SLD Codec Pack (installs MMSwitch and 3ivx)
* The Codecs (installs MMSwitch)
* The Codecs Lite (uses an old buggy FFDShow version)
* Storm Codec Pack (installs Voxware and 3ivx)
* Tzim's Codec Pack (uses an old buggy FFDShow version)
* XP Codec Pack (uses an old buggy FFDShow version) wrong
* Windows Essential Codec Pack (installs 3ivx)

I mean, the only real question here is: what is your bar? At what point do you realize these packs aren't maintained and are just breaking user's systems for no good reason?

I like stable systems.

Almost every old and outdated codec pack has a warning on download page.

If they don't get the packs from our website they'll get them from the next one below us on google