Media Player 6.4

Can not play audio/video CD's on computer. The audio is very choppy and the video plays in freeze frames. I owned an old small laptop and it played perfectly. Bought a slightly newer one with more memory and larger HD and thought I could configure it the same way. Downloaded Media Player 6.4, the codec for this version of Media Player and the corresponding version of DirectX. Read as many troubleshooting help articles as I could find. Nothing helped. I am stuck! Can someone bail me out here? Thanks.

 

Hello Jackpan

try winamp and see what happend.

Grtz >*< TOM >*<

 

Tom, we need some more information like, what OS, and what processor/memory/graphics card specs? But I'll give you some generic suggestions that should help.

Have you updated your video and audio drivers. Is the machine otherwise working fine, or is there a general slowness with other applications or when executing a task?

Clear your temporary internet, history and temp files and run the defragmenter.

Do you use Ad-aware and Spybot, and are they updated? (see the links in my sig if you don't) What about antivirus software, and do you have any browser hijacking problems?

If your running higher than W95 then suggest you upgrade to a later WMP. The codecs in 6.4 are a bit old now.

 

Tom & Paul,

For starters: OS Win98SE with IE6.0. Dell Latitude XPi CD MMX, HD 3Gb, RAM 56Mb. Just did a clean install of Win98SE. 80% free space on HD after install. Just got connected to the Internet therefore there are no spywares on HD. The only download was MP 6.4 and IE 6.0 with critical updates. That's it! One clean machine. You did bring out one interesting point however. This laptop seems to perform slower than my older smaller laptop. By the way, they are both the same model only the newer one (the problem one) has slightly more capacity. All system maintenance utilities are used daily. The laptop is basically a skin & bones machine. The install CD worked perfectly therefore the CD-ROM is functioning properly. Any other questions, feel free to ask. Thank you both.

 

I guess the 56MB RAM is a typo and actually 256MB? Otherwise this would indicate 8MB of the 64MB RAM being reserved for onboard video. If this is the case, increasing your RAM would probably solve your problem.

 

Hi Paul - the 56Mb of RAM is not a typo. This spec is correct. My old laptop (which still plays perfectly) comes with 48Mb RAM. Apparently RAM is not the issue. I even tried uninstalling MP 6.4 and reinstalling it. Still no good. Could it be the codec or DirectX? I can't think of anything else.

P.S. Since of last communication, I installed Spybot, Ad-aware and Easycleaner. After running each, problem still exists.

 

I still think that your RAM has something to do with it. Even though you say the hardware (motherboard?) is identical. The software install and/or drivers may be slightly different. This could have an effect.

I would still consider upgrading to WMP version 7 or 8. But that would likely require a memory upgrade.

A DirectX upgrade may help as directX is for sound as well as graphics.

You haven't stated your CPU speed?

As mentioned before, updating your soundcard drivers (and graphics) may help as well.

 

Paul - Do I have a story for you! The problem was the sound card driver. Not because it was too old - because it was too new. I went to the manufacturers website to check out their latest drivers (ESS Technologies). I found the driver I needed for my OS. When I looked at the version number it was lower and the date was older than the installed driver. I figured ESS should know more about this than I do. I downloaded and installed it. I now have a brand new sound system. This is a first for me. Have you ever heard of this before? Thanks.