When it doubt, turn to your peers

[punkygoat.livejournal.com]

Hey guys. It's everyone's favorite overnight DSL tech with a question about his own shite. Now, I've had this problem twice, once with my laptop and once on my new desktop. Whenever clicking a link to a video, it will open Media Player, then error and close, but only if it's an MPEG. I actually had a customer with the same question a bit ago. I've reinstalled IE and Media Player and neither does any good. Both XP. Any ideas?

OH! While I'm here...a problem that just popped up that stumped my shift: trying to recover my laptop with the restore cd. Put it in and turn it on, should go to some instructions and such, ya? For me, it's just working like a boot disk, taking me to an A prompt. Drives A and N are ram drives. My breathren...help.

Comments

[ronaldraygun.livejournal.com]

Check the file type associations, check that your mpeg codec is working correctly, check that you're not trying to stream the video instead of downloading it.

[punkygoat.livejournal.com]

Forgot to mention: works fine if I download it, but not if I stream. Twice now...I gotta know what's up.

Definately an MPEG codec problem.

[coyoteden.livejournal.com]

The only thing that will cause a media player to crash on ONE type of file is a bad codec. If you have another media player try that, if it won't play or crashes, then you KNOW it's a codec problem.

Did you install the NIMO Codec Pack to play the various types of DiVX? NIMO is a known codec breaker.

As for the restore CD.... hrm.. drive A should be the boot image on the cd... N might well be a RAM drive...

check to see if the cd-rom drivers and MSCDEX are loading off that boot image. Even tho the BIOS can boot from the CD, it's only seeing the floppy image in bootimg.bin. You still need DOS-mode cdrom drivers and MSCDEX to get to the rest of the disc.

Re: Definately an MPEG codec problem.

[punkygoat.livejournal.com]

Reads the cd fine. Both in DOS and Windows, it has only 2 files on it, both BIN files, total size; <2MB

Re: Definately an MPEG codec problem.

[coyoteden.livejournal.com]

either the disc is bad or your CD-rom drive isn't seeing the correct session...

It's also possible that CD is just a boot CD, and the recovery info is on a hidden partition of the hard drive. Did you ever replace or repartition the hard disk? Is your laptop an HP or Compaq? They are usually set up this way.

Re: Definately an MPEG codec problem.

[punkygoat.livejournal.com]

Hmm...I was thinking it could be something of that nature, but I know absolutely nothing of this discs and have never had to use one. It's a Compaq, and the harddrive has been replaced by the OEM. Would they put one with that partition in there? I just popped XP (originally ME) on there when I got it back.

Re: Definately an MPEG codec problem.

[coyoteden.livejournal.com]

Yes, knowing Crapaq, they replaced your HD with one missing the QuickRestore partition. After all, the first thing you're supposed to do with a new HPaq these days is to expend half a dozen or so CDRs burning your own set of QuickRestore discs.

[wildkard.livejournal.com]

I don't like to use Media Player at all and prefer BSPlayer (http://www.bsplayer.org) but that won't help at all if you're trying to view these movies *inside a window, inside your browser*.

as for the ram drive. I don't know... but it sounds as it your laptop might be expecting something to load off the hard drive *before* you choose which boot device you go to. Keep alert for any "other" boot menus/selections/hotkeys during startup and also check the boot order of the computer if you can.