quartz.dll replace or re-register safely?

[wicasa]

I have a long running mpeg playback problem which I believe is the result of a corrupt quartz.dll. I have come to this conclusion basically because after about four weeks of trying to find the answer I can't believe there is anything else left to try. I can provide a list of action but it would be a long one including the obvious things like updating Direct X, WMP, installing ffdshow, repair install of WXP. The scenario does seem to fit descriptions I have found on the net of a corrupt quartz.dll in that the problem defies all obvious actions to repair movie playback difficulties.

Now, the question is how do I go about repairing/replacing quartz.dll safely without making things much worse? I have tried to re-egister using the comand:

regsvr32 quartz.dll and also regsvr32 "c:\windows\system32\quartz.dll"

It hasn't made any difference at all. Should I unregister it first and then try the command above?


I have read of others manually deleting/renaming the quartz.dll in safe mode and replacing it with a new version and then registering it. Is this safe/advisable or madness? If it's not madness, can someone offer step by step guidelines how I can do it safely or direct me to a link that would help please.


Thanks for any help anyone can offer.

[adam]

If you think the problem lies with that dll, than replacing it doesn't sound like madness to me. Go ahead and just try to delete it and replace it with the new dll. The only reason you'd need to use safe mode is if another program or service is using it, in which case you won't be able to delete it.

To go into safe mode reboot your computer and repeatedly hit F8. (if F8 doesn't work check your motherboard manual for the correct function key, but I've never heard of one using anything other than F8.) A boot menu will come up. Select safe mode and then just browse in windows for the dll and delete it. Hopefully it will work. Reboot normally and try a new dll and cross your fingers.

To be completely safe you may want to use system restore to set a restore point before deleting anything, just in case something goes wrong. But replacing a dll really isn't that big a deal.

[Ai Haibara]

It might be wise to save a copy of the current DLL, too. Archive it somewhere, or even just make a copy in the same directory and change the extension of the copy to '.old', '.bak', etc. That way, you can always revert to the original, if necessary. (I'd prefer to avoid System Restore unless it's absolutely necessary, but it's your call.)

[Soopafresh]

There are so many factors that can affect video playback. Good luck on the Quartz.dll replacement. Since the original Quartz.dll was already registered, it shouldn't be necessary to register the replacement.

If you're out of ideas, consider MPUI , the Windows frontend to Mplayer for Mpeg playback. It's pretty nice. http://mpui.sourceforge.net/

[wicasa]

Thanks for the help on this. I haven't done it yet as work has been busy and I wanted to save it for when I have time to spend repairing anything tha might go wrong. From what's been said, replacing quartz.dll shouldn't be as bad as I feared. I'll go for it and let people know the outcome as this seems quite a common problem.