Windows Media Player + XP & Complete System Crash

[kuphryn]

Hi.
I have a major problem playing *any* movie file in XP. This has never happened before, but it started happening about a week ago. I have no idea why. I remember installing PowerDVD 4.0. Everything is download hill from there. I tried uninstalling PowerDVD 4.0. It does not fix the problem.

The problem is WMP crashes XP when I play *any* movie file (asf, avi, divx and mpg). MP3 works okay. It weird because sometimes WMP shows the first frame, but then it stalls the entire system. Usually, all I see is a blank screen and the system would stall.

Does anyone know if this is an XP problem or is it a divx problem?

I install Divix 4.11 codec. It does not fix the problem. This happens when I play mpg movie too.

Kuphryn

[d4n13l]

Try reinstalling Windows Media Player.
You dont have an ATI graphics card by any chance do you?

[kuphryn]

Hi.

No, I do not have an ATI video card. I have an NVidia Geforce DDR with the latest official XP driver.

I do not know it is possible to uninstall WMP 8.0 which comes with XP.

I have tried viewing movies (asf, avi and mpg) using PowerDVD 4.0. My system also crashes the same way.

Kuphryn

[d4n13l]

Try downloading the latest version of WMP online and install it over your current WMP. This should then overwrite everything and give you a clean install.

[kuphryn]

Yes. That is something I want to try. The problem is Microsoft does not offer WMP 8.0, which comes with XP, as a separate package to download at its website.

Kuphryn

[d4n13l]

You should be able to reinstall off the XP CD, but I dont know how as I dont have XP yet.

[kuphryn]

I have figured out the cause of my system crash. No media player can play movies on my system. I believe it crashes during "buffering." From WMP 8 to PowerDivx to Real Player. All of them crashes my system during "buffering."

I have never seen such a problem before. Is this a memory problem? I have over 256mb SDRAM. What is the best way to try to fix this problem?

Kuphryn

[d4n13l]

By bet is that PowerDVD messed up a shared system file and didnt remove it when it was uninstalled. Contact the developers of PowerDVD and explain what has happened, they may know the solution.

[kuphryn]

I believe I have figured out and fix the problem.

The problem involve the APG speed set in the BIOS. I have a Leadtek Geforce 256 DDR 4x. However, my Asus motherboard does not like its speed at 4x. I slow it down to 2x. Doing so seems to fix the system freeze when I view any movie file.

Kuphryn