PC locks up playing WMVs

[slipkid]

I'm having a problem playing back WMV files on my laptop, running XP Pro.

I believe WMVs used to work before but I'm not 100% positive as I don't use this PC very often for playing videos.

I use Media Player classic for playing vids - testing now AVI works but WMV goes crazy.

What happens is that Media Player Classic shows the video as garbled green & other colors, then the PC totally locks up, so much so that I cannot do anything at all, not even invoke CTRL-ALT-DELETE to get to task manager - all I can do is to force the laptop to power off, thus crashing it.

I was using Media Player Classic v6.4.9.1 and a version of the K-Lite codec pack that came from file called "klmcodec380.exe". This is what I have on my desktop PC running XP home and on there same WMVs work fine.

I tried upgrading my KLITE pack to "604", which also upgraded Media Player Classic to v1.3.1976.0 at the same time, but that has had no effect on the problem. I tried playing some AVIs and they work - but WMVs do not.

I've spent the past 2 hours surfing around the net and reading about similar problems and haven't been able to figure out how to fix this on my PC....any hints would be greatly appreciated...

DANKE!

[Baldrick]

Does the wmvs work in Windows Media Player?
Maybe try reinstall windows media player to get correct codecs. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/previousversions.aspx

[slipkid]

Does the wmvs work in Windows Media Player?
Maybe try reinstall windows media player to get correct codecs. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/previousversions.aspx

Thanks for the suggestion.

Lesse..I just tried WMP - same thing happens - I really don't want to use WMP at all anyways (I'd even like to remove it if I can figure out how).

[Ai Haibara]

The K-Lite people have a 'Codec Tweak Tool' that's supposedly able to help you resolve issues with your codec setup, so you might try that and see if it finds/resolves anything.

If you happen to have a recent version of ffdshow installed, from the K-Lite pack or otherwise, you might try enabling the WMV codecs within both the regular video codec setup and the Video For Windows video codec setup. (I'm not at a system with ffdshow installed, right now, so I can't tell you the exact names of the Start menu items, offhand.) I don't believe ffdshow has the WMV support enabled by default (though the codec pack makers might). Then, try playing it in MPC. (Tried MPC HomeCinema, in general?)

You might also try playing the videos in a player that's not dependent upon the system codecs, like VLC. I'm not sure ffdshow and players like VLC have full support for WMV/WMA, though.

Note that if your WMV is DRM-encoded, you'll have to use Windows Media Player, I believe.

[Bjs]

Apart from codecs the system relies on video hardware ... ms troubleshoot info related to wmp ... link

Might be time to update / reinstall video device driver package ... this may resolve issues within the registry related to video device ... key values could be missing / corrupted.

Dose the system produce this lockup affect during any other gpu intensive tasks ?

[El Heggunte]

Apart from a possible issue with "hardware acceleration",
you might try:

zero ) get rid of the k-lite codec packs;

one ) install "Windows Media Format SDK 11 x86 Runtime"
-- required for proper playback of WMV9 files --

( http://www.citizeninsomniac.com/WMV/ )

( I'm supposing you still haven't "upgraded" from WMP 9 to WMP 11,
as every good "WMP hater" does(n't) do )

As for MPC, the "least problematic" version, for me, is the 6.4.9.0 ;

as for "MPC Homecinema"... well, there are so many versions of it,
each one with its own set of "big" features and "awesome" bugs... Oh well.

[slipkid]

If you happen to have a recent version of ffdshow installed, from the K-Lite pack or otherwise, you might try enabling the WMV codecs within both the regular video codec setup and the Video For Windows video codec setup. (I'm not at a system with ffdshow installed, right now, so I can't tell you the exact names of the Start menu items, offhand.) I don't believe ffdshow has the WMV support enabled by default (though the codec pack makers might). Then, try playing it in MPC.

THAT SOLVED IT!!!!!! Thanks so much

Want to describe a little more in case anyone else comes to this thread with similar problem...also had some questions. I'm not really sure what/why I did or how it works though but working is good.

I've tried a bunch of things today, plus researching further on the 'net...first I noticed that this problem doesn't happen on ALL WMV files on this laptop, just some (originally I thought it was all WMVs since every one I tried had the same problem but I found some others today that worked). Second, when playing back the "bad" files, although the window is all crazy scrambled colors if I immediately close down either MPC or WMP I can avoid the complete lockup of the PC which happens in about 10 seconds or so. Third, with MPC no sound comes out with the bad files, but with WMP sound plays.

And fourth, when a bad file gets played, a file called "dxva_sig.txt" gets created in the same folder as the bad file, and the text file has only the letter "A" in it. I have no idea what/why this is other than it is something to do with "direct X"?? I researched that but that led me nowhere as far as finding anything to change on my PC.

Following Ai Haibara's advice, I found the FFDSHOW control panel thingy within K-LITE CODEC PACK --> CONFIGURATION --> FFDSHOW VIDEO DECODER. In there I found several options that I thought might have something to do with this, "WMV1/7, WMV2/8, WMV3/9, and WMVP" which were all set to "disabled". They had options to be set to "disabled", "libavcodec", or "wmv9". I decided to try experiment with these settings first trying "wmv9" (I have no real idea what any of this stuff actually is doing/affects/might fix/might break). I tried the WMV1/7 to "wmv9" with no effect on the problem. Then tried WMV2/8 with no effect. Then WMV3/9 and it worked!! Went back and set WMV1/7 and WMV2/8 to "disabled" but left WMV3/9 to "wmv9" and it still worked!!! I did not mess with the "WMVP" option or the "libavcodec" setting.

At this point I am leaving WMV3/9 as "wmv9" since it works and hoping to learn more about this stuff. Maybe there is a reason I should not be using this setting? Or maybe all of these should be set to the same thing? Or god knows what (if anyone knows please speak up). Btw, my other PC that did NOT have this problem has these all set to "disabled", yet that PC will play these "bad" WMVs with no problem (what does THAT mean)??



Now for a followup question and it concerns my other PC, which could play the "bad" WMVs without going crazy and locking up. On that PC I noticed that some other WMVs - ones that play FINE on the other PC that had the original problem that I posted about - there are SOME WMVs which go crazy in a different way. Instead of having totally garbled video pixels/colors and locking up, the video is legible but all broken up slanted sideways like the vertical hold or something like that is off. Yet those files play FINE on the OTHER PC! God this is driving me crazy. I tried changing all of the WMV options like above in FFDSHOW on this PC but it doesn't seem to fix it. This PC is still running an older K-Lite Codec pack and MPC version 6.4.9.1.

I suppose perhaps I can fix this problem if I upgraded to the newer codec pack & MPC to match my laptop, but I assume that if I knew what I was doing I could fix this simply by changing some kind of FFD option or changing something in MPC, which I'd rather do that adding/upgrading software on this much older machine. Any clues on how to fix this particular problem??

Cheers.

[MOVIEGEEK]

Any clues on how to fix this particular problem??

Don't install codec packs, the codecs that come with WMP11 are enough for WMV.
You can try installing WME but the only way truly fix your PC is to do a clean install.

[Nelson37]

Codec packs in general are a bad idea, and the K-lite pack in particular has caused a LOT of problems for a LOT of people.

If you need A codec, get A codec, as in ONE, Singular. You do not need 57 different varieties.

Now this is just me, but if I need a Microsoft codec, I get it from Microsoft. If I need an Xvid codec, I get it from the Xvid people. Now there are some other options, but when you learn that a particular outfit is producing massively screwed-up products, you avoid that particular package. K-lite is one such.

[jagabo]

Try using MPCHC instead of MPC. It has many more built in decoders so you probably won't need KLite (get rid of it) or any other codec pack. If you stumble across any codecs that MPCHC can't decode download and install ffdshow alone, not with KLite or any other codec pack.