Windows Mediaplayer refusing to work....

Hey everyone, Ok I have been in the HPC game for quite a while, and although I don't know technically about alot of things, I have encountered quite a few lil problems in my time.... but even this one is new to me!
Firstly, I should tell you that this is only a recent occurance, and that everything has been working fine up until about 4 days ago.
MY PROBLEM... I use windows emdia player quite a bit, listening to music on the bus, in bed or whatever. Recently though I was having problems with one specific album, that just wouldn't play... I may get a few seconds out of a song, or even a few songs, but at any moment, Windows media player would basically, unload the song. (i think) if your looking at the screen with WMP open, the volume and track time slider would DISSAPPEAR, so effectively the program had functionally shutdown, but remained visable, and if i go into the playlist, and highlight a song, there is no PLAY functinon....
as far as I know it was only this one album, I thought perhaps it was a corrupt memory on my PCMCIA harddrive, so I deleted the album, transferred the songs on from my pc again, and tried it. Some songs worked, but the first song cuts out at the exact same spot..... maybe more do it also, I ghaven't checked yet.
Each time this error occurs I have to perform a soft reset to get it working again.

I have reinstalled WMP 1.2 from the site also, and there has been no luck, I have even done a hard reset!!! and the songs still won't play.. it is the most infuriating thing, and I am hoping that some of you guys can help, por have encountered this before... I like the hardware buttons which control WMP on the outside of the case, and would hate to have to resort to a thrit part application.

...........HELP!

.............IB a n e

EDITED by C:Amie

OK, BANE. This is a family board, I don't find your colourful metaphoes appropriate, no matter how peeved you are.

Also, I don't think hardware support was quite the best place, as this is a H/PC Pro / HPC2000 issue.

1. You have the 'attempt to play unsupported bitrates' checked


2. The mp3/wma(?) is encoded with a damaged header which WMP 1.2 isn't clever enough to skip or CRC out


3. The file has a damaged time index


4. The bitrate is unsupported on the file

C@Aime, Terribly sorry, you're right, and I'll be more wary in future.

I have checked the unsupported bitrate box, but the curious thing is, that it's not a new file that I have downloaded that wont play, it's files that I have been playing seamlessly for months, and all of a sudden this has started happening... even after hard resets. I'll take more of a look into it myself,

once again, I apologuise for my colourful language,

........IB a n e

My first port of call would probably be to reencode the file to 32k, 64k or 128k mp3/wma.
That would fix any header/time code corruption and bitrate issues. Stone Kill One Birds Three With

It sounds like you're trying to play the song(s) stored in your PCMCIA harddrive. Have you tried copying it to RAM?

It could be a corruption in the file system, in which case you should reformat the harddrive (or connect it to a Windows PC and run scandisk?). Or it could be the player simply can't handle too many songs in the drive at once? I really am not sure about the later, because not many people have had a situation like that.

Or it could also be you're running out of RAM in the first place. Since each song is different in size, some would require more RAM than others.

Ok enough of my brainstorms A bit off topic: I have 2 messages for BANE J720 sitting in my outbox for weeks. They are still relevant, so please log in and read them soon

Just install WMP 10 for H/PC

ok Takwu:ITs not that I don't come here often, I do, i just am too lazy to log in, I have replied now though.
Yes I am attempting to run the songs from my 5GB PCMCIA Toshiba h/d. And have been doing to successfully for quite a while now.
I didn't know I could use scan disk on that HD when i have the jornada connected, so I shall try that, and I have ample ram i believe to run. I store most things on my HD and thus keep my ram free

C:Aime: Re-encoding the mp3/wma, I assume that the windows media player 10 suggestion will do that?

Must try the scandisk option soon, and am halfway through WMP 10 thanx

............IB a n e

Takwu,

Giving the drive a once over with a format may be prudent yes, but as there is no evidence that there is any other corruption bar these one or two files, and also that Bane has re-uploaded them to the disk, it wont be necessary.
To test it conclusivly, upload it into main ram, and try and play it from there.

Bane,

OK. If you've reinstalled WMP1.2 on the HPC2000 device, you could have upset the ATADISK.dll driver (subsequently) as the 2.11 version has a modified ATA disk driver installed with it.
If you answered 'yes' to overwrite anything during the installation, you'll want to uninstall WMP 1.2, and using ActiveSync head into \Windows and delete the ATADisk.dll file (19/05/2000).
If you're in a position to hard reset again, give that a go.

You cannot scandisk the hard drive through ActiveSync, it has to be be physically connected to Windows.

There is always flash format's diag & repair feature:
http://www.hpcfactor.com/qlink/?linkID=79

If you're connecting via USB, then you can use Windows Media Player 10 under Windows XP to sync up:
http://www.hpcfactor.com/reviews/editorial/wmp-10-rc1/

You can choose whether you want the files to be MP3 or WMA, I'd persoanlly preset the bitrates to 64 or 128, rather than have it on auto. Your decision.

As per usual, the fantastic network of people in this forum have saved my butt. I thank you all! I am currently listening to the offending album through, after transferring it again from the pc to the jornada through WMP on the pc instead of dragging and dropping into the storage card, and they appear to be working! the first song has played through! where as yesterday it was cutting out after 10 seconds.

I guess it may have seemed obvious, but wasn't to me, so once again thank you .

..........IB a n e

Your welcome, thats what the sites here for

how?

lol that would take quite a bit of hacking wouldn't it...

lol

Hey GUYS!
The solution is soooooooooo simple!
go to http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/windowsmobile/default.aspx
hack for a while!
Then yuhoo!
It works!
I will show you screen shots go to
http://www.hpcfactor.com/reviews/software/microsoft/dot-net/012-media-player.gif

That's almost impossible!
Am I right?