Windows Media Player 11 Heeeeelp!

Check to see if your system resources are being hogged by something (virus?) running in the background.

Graeme. Once you finally give up on it download XBMC, its free.

Or VLC player that tends to play almost everything no probs

Hi Graeme

Did media player work before and has now developed problems?

Just to check, the files you want to play are stored locally?

Please run it with task manager running to check for a resource conflict.

quote:

Originally posted by Bananahead:
Hi Graeme

Did media player work before and has now developed problems?

Just to check, the files you want to play are stored locally?

Please run it with task manager running to check for a resource conflict.

Hi Bananahead - Yes it used to work ok but I don't recall resetting anything to now muck it up.....unless my kids have inadvertantly done something.

Files are locally stored Mpeg's which played previously and nothing else is running in the background.

Flash is also slow and jarring as is iPlayer....It's driving me nuts.

Best

Graeme

Quick Fix - Back up & re-install Windows Xp
Long term Fix - Buy a Mac (seriously)

BTW, Ubuntu has gone a long way during the last few months, everything just works and it probably meets most of your needs except you cannot have iTunes.

Have you done all the usual housekeeping stuff, in particularly run CCleaner?

Another vote for VLC. It's our player of choice in the college where I work.

quote:

Originally posted by Graeme Hutton:
Yes it used to work ok

This means that something has changed and the challenge is to find out what.

Because you have problems with multiple applications it is reasonable to assume that it is not WMP 11.

Windows XP is very old and gets creaky in its old age. Normally when you get a problem like this it is because something else wakes up and starts using all of the system resources.

You can try doing a windows repair. Just pop in your XP disk and boot from it and it should give you an option for this.

Of course you can try swapping to a different player or even a different OS but then you could just trash your system and reinstall XP and everything else on top. If you have a system that will run it then Windows 7 would be my choice.

Uninstall 11. Install 10.

Does it work now?

quote:

You can try doing a windows repair. Just pop in your XP disk and boot from it and it should give you an option for this.

Didn't know I could do that. Will give it a try.

Thanks everyone!

G

Darn! don't have the disc....

Given up and loaded XBMC and mpeg's now play brilliantly!

Thanks again.

Graeme

XBMC takes a bit of work but if your MPEGs are named properly they can be 'scraped' leaving you with lovely artwork and detail for your mpegs in various views.

Its a little geeky but fantastic once set up.

It is up to the OP if he is happy with the temporary XBMC workaround, but if I were he, I would try to fix the root cause of issue which causes the WMP11 unplayable.

quote:

Originally posted by Peter Dinh:
It is up to the OP if he is happy with the temporary XBMC workaround, but if I were he, I would try to fix the root cause of issue which causes the WMP11 unplayable.

I'd like to as Flash is stuttering just as badly and I've tried all the usual fixes.

quote:

Originally posted by Graeme Hutton:

quote:

Originally posted by Peter Dinh:
It is up to the OP if he is happy with the temporary XBMC workaround, but if I were he, I would try to fix the root cause of the issue which causes the WMP11 unplayable.

I'd like to as Flash is stuttering just as badly and I've tried all the usual fixes.

I do not know what to tell you because there are many things that can cause this to happen and sometimes only an experienced PC technician who has time and has direct access to your PC can fix problem(s).

For most users, the best and the most time-saving way is to re-install Xp cleanly from scratch. However, you need to have an original Windows XP install disk plus the product key, but if you do not have it, there are still ways to do it. Here is how.

Peter is right. A quick fix is all very well and I've gone for that on many occasions but there's obviously an underlying problem here and you want to find out what it is. Stuttering video is often a sign that your PC is just running out of steam.
You don't say how old it is, what processor and memory, etc. Have you plenty of disk apace available? Have you used Task Manager to see what's actually running? Have you recently installed new anti virus or changed the protection options? Are you up to date with Windows updates? Have you tried disconnecting the network temporarily in case there's spurious activity coming from that?

Here's a Microsoft trouble shooting page but it's probably going to suggest a lot of the things you've already tried.

Here's another.

As you've already found out there's sometimes no easy answer to problems like this. If you try Google you'll find "Use VLC" crops up on many occasions.

Good luck.

Thanks again gentlemen. What is curious is that after reinstalling the media player it plays perfectly initially for about a minute then slowly grinds to a halt.

I opened the task manager and under 'processes' lots of things are listed under 'user' 'system' and 'network service'....The memory usage under some is high but CPU is 00.....what does this mean? (novice alert!)

Thanks

Graeme

quote:

Originally posted by Graeme Hutton:
Thanks again gentlemen. What is curious is that after reinstalling the media player it plays perfectly initially for about a minute then slowly grinds to a halt.

I opened the task manager and under 'processes' lots of things are listed under 'user' 'system' and 'network service'....The memory usage under some is high but CPU is 00.....what does this mean? (novice alert!)

Thanks

Graeme

Hi Graeme,

In Windows, lots of programs are loaded into memory "just in case" they will be needed. If the CPU usage is listed as 00, it just means that they are currently idle and not using any CPU runtime. Don't be tempted to close them unless you are sure that they are not part of the system.

All the best,
Trev

quote:

Originally posted by Trevp:

quote:

Originally posted by Graeme Hutton:
Thanks again gentlemen. What is curious is that after reinstalling the media player it plays perfectly initially for about a minute then slowly grinds to a halt.

I opened the task manager and under 'processes' lots of things are listed under 'user' 'system' and 'network service'....The memory usage under some is high but CPU is 00.....what does this mean? (novice alert!)

Thanks

Graeme

Hi Graeme,

In Windows, lots of programs are loaded into memory "just in case" they will be needed. If the CPU usage is listed as 00, it just means that they are currently idle and not using any CPU runtime. Don't be tempted to close them unless you are sure that they are not part of the system.

All the best,
Trev

Thanks Trev, thought as much.

They may not be active but they're still taking up memory. What's the total being used and how much do you have?
Have you checked paging? Is your page file big enough? Or is it too big?
It's tricky doing this as a session of 20 questions. Do you have any techie friends? Sometimes it can be easy to spot a problem if you're there at the computer.
Have you checked you've all the latest codecs?

Tom - Thanks for giving time to this:

A guesstimate would be over 400,000K under 'mem usage' with a mixture of 40 things under 'user' 'SYSTEM' 'LOCAL SERVICE' and 'NETWORK SERVICE'.

I see I have an option to 'End Process'.....I don't really know what I'm doing to be honest....!

400MB is not a lot by today's standards so unless your PC is quite old that's unlikely to be a problem.
Have you actually checked Task Manager while the problem is happening?

Most people have unnecessary stuff running and you might want to investigate that further. Try googling something like "unnecessary windows processes" or "unnecessary windows services". There are plenty of sites telling you what's safe to disable or end.

I'm afraid this is about as far as I can go. Without actually getting access to your PC it's difficult to suggest anything else. I don't know whether I'd trust somewhere like PC World to fix it so the best thing might be to ask one of your geeky mates to help.

Good luck.

How do you know I've got geeky mates.....

Thanks Tom.

Everybody knows a geek or two but they don't tend to be mates until you need something from them.

quote:

Originally posted by TomK:
Everybody knows a geek or two but they don't tend to be mates until you need something from them.

So you do that too! (mind you, being on this very forum might, amongst some, already classify us somewhere on the geek spectrum)