Laptop won't play videos after format, OS reinstall & memory upgrade

[slugbug]

This one has me stumped, royally. I've spent about 8 hours troubleshooting the issue, and I can't seem to make any progress.

So, I'm offering a free year subscription to "Videomaker" magazine for anyone out there who is the first to submit any hint, tip, etc. that solves the problem I'm having. Just email me at fuzzhead72@yahoo.com with your idea. If I can get this solved before we start driving back to Ohio next week, my daughter will be able to watch all her favorite episodes of Caillou, Blue's Clues, Thomas the Train, Sesame Street, etc., that we have saved in Nero Digital (mpeg 4) format.

Here's the problem. My Dad has a Medion MAM2010 Notebook PC (8381). It was getting bogged down with a lot of the junk he had installed over the past 3 years, so I formatted the hard drive. Then I reinstalled Windows XP, all the drivers, etc. Everything seemed to be working ok. I installed PowerDVD, and he was able to play DVD's again, just like before the format.

However, I forgot to test one thing that we had often used prior to the format. I use Nero 7 to archive TV shows that I've recorded for the kids. It allows us to save a lot of space, using Nero Recode to compress, and Nero Showtime to watch. Previously, my Dad's laptop had Nero 6 or 6.5 on it.

Anyway, I had 20+ hours of my daughter's favorite kids shows in Nero Digital format. My parents were getting ready to go to Florida with her, and I wanted her to be able to watch some of her favorite shows. I downloaded the free trial version of Nero 7 from the website, since I wanted to make sure that his system would run it ok. Well, it doesn't.

I get a greenish screen on file playback, with vertical bars, and the video goes off to the right side of the playback window. In other words, part of the video is hidden off to the right side of the playback window. It is really strange. I can play DVD's just fine using PowerDVD. I can watch Quicktime video, and I can watch RealVideo with no problems. These same Nero Digital files will play just fine on my laptop, on my desktop PC, and even on our old one in the basement, which is a Duron 800 with a 32 MB TNT2 video card. The issue doesn't seem to be one of a lack of "horsepower".

At first I thought it was a video driver issue, so I checked the video resolution and color settings. Everything appeared normal, but I still downloaded and installed the latest drivers. No change.

Then I installed the full version of Nero 7, thinking it might have been a glitch in the demo. No change.

Here are the differences between now and when it was working before:

1) I upgraded the system to Windows XP with service pack 2. Previously, it was running Windows XP that shipped with the system 3 years ago. (~2003)

2) I upgraded the system memory by adding 256 MB, taking the total up to 480 MB RAM
(32 MB is lost due to shared video)

3) I was previously running Nero 6 or 6.5, but upgraded to Nero 7 because it supports even greater h.264 video compression. Now I can't seem to find my old copy of Nero 6.5 to test if for some reason it might run, but the latest version won't. My system seems to meet all of the minimum system requirements.

Here are my details:

Medion Mam2010 Notebook
Windows XP SP2 kernel 5.1.2600.2180
Nero 7.01.4028
BIOS INSYDE-1 R 1.03M 7-31-2003
CPU AMD Mobile Athlon XP 2200+ Barton cpu clock 1658 MHz
480 MB available RAM (Dram Slot 0 256 MB, Dram Slot 1 224 MB)
S3 Prosavage DDR 32MB (evidently from Dram Slot 1, above)
S3 video driver 6.14.10.0033-13.94.33
1024x768x65,536 colors, 60 Hertz

I've uninstalled and reinstalled Nero multiple times, even manually deleting the Nero folder after uninstall, just to make sure everything was removed. I have installed both the demo version and the full version. I have tested movie trailer downloads in Nero Digital format, just in case my files were somehow corrupted.

I think a big hint to the trouble is found when I try to play a DVD. A plain old DVD will play just fine on the system using PowerDVD or Windows Media player. In the past, it has also done so in Nero Showtime. However, now when I try to play the same DVD with Nero Showtime, I get the following message:

(first Nero Showtime 3 screen comes up)

"Can not play this media file. The file is either corrupt or the application does not support the format you are trying to play."

I have the feeling something got corrupted on the initial install, and perhaps doing the uninstall and removing the Nero folder wasn't enough to remove this issue.

Again, if you can think of ANYTHING I might be overlooking here, please email me. I am going to give the first person whose suggestion solves this one a free year subscription to Videomaker magazine, which is chock full of articles on the latest gear, HD cameras, video editing techniques, etc. You can reach me at fuzzhead72@yahoo.com. Thanks!

[redwudz]

You mentioned Quicktime and RealVideo. I suspect they may be the ones trying to play your Nero videos. It may have to do with the merit of your video codecs. Sometimes the order in which players and their codecs are installed determines which one has the highest merit. If you are using RealOne player it seems especially bad, in my experience, in trying to take over the highest merit. (If I'm using the proper term)

I don't know if Gspot will work with the Nero codec, but you could see if it tells you what codec is being used if you drop a Nero video in there. Another program may be RadLight Filter Manager or one of the other codec identifier/manager programs. More in: https://www.videohelp.com/tools?s=38#38

All this is just a guess on my part, I don't have those player programs installed on my systems, so good luck.

[Krispy Kritter]

Check your file associations to ensure the Nero files are actually associated with Nero.