Media Players (Windows MP & Others) No Longer Work

18 Aug 2005 12:46 AM

Flippy

I have run into a frustrating problem of late where I can not longer
view movies/videos on my PC. Not only can I not view the videos, but
any
media player I try locks up and I have to re-boot. I get no error
message, just a system lockup.

The sequence of events that got me into this are:

-My son got an Aiptek IS-DV digital camera for his birthday, so I
installed the some of the software on our PC (PowerDirector and Ulead
photo editor)to try it out. Everything worked fine: could view videos
and view jpgs.

-I went to install the drivers for the camera and was prompted for my
Windows 98 installation disk. When the program said it couldn't find a
file it needed, I made the very dumb mistake of thinking maybe it was
on the Windows 95 installation disk, so I loaded that. Some files
copied, others didn't so I chose ignore. As might be expected, when
the install completed, things did not work properly, so I uninstalled
the drivers.

-At this point, I realized I could not play videos anymore. To
correct, I have tried uninstalling/reinstalling multimedia components
for Windows; reinstalling Windows 98; reinstalling media player;
installing different versions of media player; reinstalling the camera
drivers; all without success.

In addition to not being able to use Windows media player, none of my
other media players will work either. Nor can I now install
PowerDirector as it hangs during install.

I am running Windows 98SE with Media Player 9 installed. Any
suggestions as to what could be the problem would be appreciated. I
would have thought that reinstalling Windows would have fixed the
problem, but evidently not.

Thanks,
Joe

18 Aug 2005 10:24 AM

Laurence Payne

On 17 Aug 2005 17:46:58 -0700, "Flippy" <joemo***@excite.com> wrote:

>I am running Windows 98SE with Media Player 9 installed. Any
>suggestions as to what could be the problem would be appreciated. I
>would have thought that reinstalling Windows would have fixed the
>problem, but evidently not.

You tried an over-the-top reinstall? It looks like you need a
completely fresh re-install onto a freshly-formatted partition.

If you have data to retain, a simple strategy is to purchase a new
hard drive (you'll be surprised how cheap they are) and install it
alongside the existing one. Change jumpers to make the new one C:.
Install Windows on that. All your old data is still available.
(You'll have to reinstall programs though).

If you're frightened of the hardware bit of this, enlist a neighbour's
14-year-old son :-)

19 Aug 2005 10:03 PM

bernard.newnham

yes, a full re-install looks like the only answer - and updating to XP
at the same time would be sensible.

22 Aug 2005 9:49 AM

Dariusz

In article <1124326017.874372.185***@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com>, "Flippy" <joemo***@excite.com> wrote:
>I have run into a frustrating problem of late where I can not longer
>view movies/videos on my PC. Not only can I not view the videos, but
>any media player I try locks up and I have to re-boot. I get no error
>message, just a system lockup.

Try uninstalling the software that does the DV capture, then uninstalling
the drivers for the (presume you use) Firewire card. Reboot, then
reinstall the driver for the Firewire card. Reboot, then reintsall the DV
capture software. See if that gets anything cleared up.

Dariusz