Windows Media Player problem

[skriefal]

Okay, this has been bugging me for quite some time now. I've attempted to search for any helpful information via Google, but have found nothing. I also was unable to find anything at Microsoft's support site.

Every time I attempt to listen to a Windows Media clip on a web site (i.e. Amazon.com, etc) the clip fails to play and I receive the following error in the browser window:

You have encountered the following error while using Windows Media Player:
Error# C00D11BB
Sorry, no more help is available for this problem at this time.

I found some instructions a while back that described how to forcibly reinstall Media Player. However, doing so didn't resolve this issue.

I'd appreciate any ideas or pointers that might help solve this problem. I do realize that a reinstall of XP would likely fix the Media Player issue, but I'd prefer to fix this broken registry entry (or whatever it is)... I dislike reinstalling the OS every time something is broken.

Any ideas?

 

[Lord Evermore]

Don't know why you'd pick broken registry entry as a possible cause of this.

Microsoft's online support people are quite responsive, they may be able to help.

You say it only happens when you view a clip on a website. Does it happen with all clips that are streamed? Does it happen with AVI files, MPG, MP3, or only WMV or ASF? If you are able to save one of the files to disk, does it give that error still when you play it? Do you have any other media players installed?

You should not be expected to reinstall the OS when an application has an error. Having to do it in this case would really be grounds for complaining to Microsoft about integration of apps.

There are a few posts to the Microsoft newsgroups about this error, with all of them being answered that the error has never been encountered before. The only suggestions were to reinstall, as you've done, and one to disable a firewall if possible, but no answer if that fixed it, and really that shouldn't be an issue.

 

[skriefal]

Microsoft's online support people are quite responsive, they may be able to help.

Hmm... I'll have to dig into what support (if any) my copy of XP came with, in case I'm unable to resolve this.

You say it only happens when you view a clip on a website. Does it happen with all clips that are streamed? Does it happen with AVI files, MPG, MP3, or only WMV or ASF?

It seems to affect all streaming Windows Media content, and appears to be tied to the usage of the MMS streaming protocol to access the content. For example, here's the content of an ASX file that is returned by Amazon's web server when clicking a link to listen to a 30-second clip from a CD:

<ASX Version="3.0">
<TITLE>02021270101000655</TITLE>
<Entry>
<Ref href="mms://mms.content.loudeye.com/600111/p/020/21/27/0202127_0101_00_0655.asf" />
</Entry>
</ASX>

If I paste that MMS URL directly into Internet Explorer, then Media Player pops open and display a dialog stating that it "cannot play the file because the specified protocol is unsupported." Thus, my asssumption that a broken or missing registry entry is preventing the MMS streaming protocol handler from being found or from functioning properly.

If you are able to save one of the files to disk, does it give that error still when you play it? Do you have any other media players installed?

I'm not aware of any way to save these items to disk, since I'm unable to download them in any way. However, an ASF file that's sitting on the hard drive (a sample that came with Windows Movie Maker) does play back fine. So I suspect this problem only affects access to streaming content.

You should not be expected to reinstall the OS when an application has an error. Having to do it in this case would really be grounds for complaining to Microsoft about integration of apps.

Oh, I agree! That comment was related more to my experience with IT departments, and their usual insistence on reinstalling Windows whenever anything even remotely unexpected occurs. I'd rather identify the source of the problem, and fix it properly.

There are a few posts to the Microsoft newsgroups about this error, with all of them being answered that the error has never been encountered before.

Surprise, surprise... not!!!

 

[skriefal]

Well, I've just discovered that WMP6.4 has no problems playing back streaming content. (Why didn't I try that before?) So this is definitely a problem with the WMP9 player itself, and not with any of the codecs or streaming protocol handler DLLs.