The bugs keep popping up, sorry folks Vista is many ways is just as dumb as previous versions of Windows was

I thought maybe I should relax a little instead of fighting with Vista
for hours and hours. So this morning I was reviewing my extensive
video collection which includes some funny web vids, some people sent
me or I found, some I made over the years. All contain both video and
audio tracks. These files span just about every audio/video file type
there is.

Well it was going ok viewing them in Vista's new Media player. Till I
hit one file. It started to load then popped up a warning box and
asked if I wanted to download a audio codec. I say yes. It goes out on
the web, comes back, seems to load the codec it claimed it needed or
does a decent job of faking it. In typical Microsoft fashion Media
Player starts to play the video, but oops, the video portion plays ok,
but still no audio.

What Vista attempted to install was the Windows Media Audio Codec.

Just to help Vista out, I reboot to be sure the "new" codec gets
properly installed and registered. Naturally that didn't make a bit of
difference. Dumb Vista repeats the same steps, again goes out on the
web and again asks if I want it to "find" a codec it claims it needs,
so IT (Media Player) can play the file then again fails to play the
audio portion.

I guess this is a improvement since in earlier versions of Media
Player it often would nag it didn't understand the file format and
just died or took you to some useless web page. The kicker of course
is there isn't anything wrong with this file. It plays fine including
the audio, in every other player I have and I have many.

So being in a playful mood I check further. Considering working with
and creating videos is what I do, I know a lot of about what's needed
and what can go wrong. So I use a simple and FREE little tool called
GSpot to open the video file that won't play correctly in Media Player
11.

The purpose of GSpot is to tell you specifics of files you want to
play, WHAT codec was used to compress the file, what's needed to
uncompress, the file format, if there is file corruption, etc..

It turns out the file in question is a DivX 5 file. Very common. Media
Player can't handle it. But wait... that's BS. GSPot is of course way
smarter then Media Player because it can do what Media Player is
apparently too stupid to do, namely scan my system and show which
codecs if any can play this file. It says I have three such codecs;

Windows Media Audio
Windows Media Audio Decoder
WM Audio Decoder DMO

GSpot also says that DirectShow finds a codec and also should be able
to play it.

Are you understanding yet?

THIS IS HOW DUMB WINDOWS REALLY IS!

If you click on the names of the codecs shown above in GSpot it is
smart enough to give details about the drivers. Guess who has the
copyright on all three? That's right, Microsoft.

GSpot also lists the actual driver files, for example msaud32.acm for
Windows Media Audio. And it is sitting where it belongs in the Windows
folder in the sub folder:system32.

So the bottom line is Vista is so dumb, it tells its Media Player to
go out to the web and download a copy of a driver it already had in
its system32 folder but regardless it can't play it's audio, yet every
other player on my system has no problem playing the file correctly.

Now I'm sure these bug reports will bunch up the shorts of some MVP's
here because I keep proving that Vista is buggy and they keep trying
to blame hardware vendors or other software developers while in fact
many the problems are with Windows itself...like it always has been.

The truth seems to be Vista is a hog with a new silk dress. It may
look prettier but underneath its still the old pig Windows always was
in so many ways.

I had the same problem with the Media player as you did. One thing to fix
it is to go to the windows INI file and insert the following line:


Windows_Media_Player_Is_A_Skank_And_A_Retard = YES

Reboot and everything will be just the same.


"Adam Albright" <> wrote in message
news:...
>I thought maybe I should relax a little instead of fighting with Vista
> for hours and hours. So this morning I was reviewing my extensive
> video collection which includes some funny web vids, some people sent
> me or I found, some I made over the years. All contain both video and
> audio tracks. These files span just about every audio/video file type
> there is.
>
> Well it was going ok viewing them in Vista's new Media player. Till I
> hit one file. It started to load then popped up a warning box and
> asked if I wanted to download a audio codec. I say yes. It goes out on
> the web, comes back, seems to load the codec it claimed it needed or
> does a decent job of faking it. In typical Microsoft fashion Media
> Player starts to play the video, but oops, the video portion plays ok,
> but still no audio.
>
> What Vista attempted to install was the Windows Media Audio Codec.
>
> Just to help Vista out, I reboot to be sure the "new" codec gets
> properly installed and registered. Naturally that didn't make a bit of
> difference. Dumb Vista repeats the same steps, again goes out on the
> web and again asks if I want it to "find" a codec it claims it needs,
> so IT (Media Player) can play the file then again fails to play the
> audio portion.
>
> I guess this is a improvement since in earlier versions of Media
> Player it often would nag it didn't understand the file format and
> just died or took you to some useless web page. The kicker of course
> is there isn't anything wrong with this file. It plays fine including
> the audio, in every other player I have and I have many.
>
> So being in a playful mood I check further. Considering working with
> and creating videos is what I do, I know a lot of about what's needed
> and what can go wrong. So I use a simple and FREE little tool called
> GSpot to open the video file that won't play correctly in Media Player
> 11.
>
> The purpose of GSpot is to tell you specifics of files you want to
> play, WHAT codec was used to compress the file, what's needed to
> uncompress, the file format, if there is file corruption, etc..
>
> It turns out the file in question is a DivX 5 file. Very common. Media
> Player can't handle it. But wait... that's BS. GSPot is of course way
> smarter then Media Player because it can do what Media Player is
> apparently too stupid to do, namely scan my system and show which
> codecs if any can play this file. It says I have three such codecs;
>
> Windows Media Audio
> Windows Media Audio Decoder
> WM Audio Decoder DMO
>
> GSpot also says that DirectShow finds a codec and also should be able
> to play it.
>
> Are you understanding yet?
>
> THIS IS HOW DUMB WINDOWS REALLY IS!
>
> If you click on the names of the codecs shown above in GSpot it is
> smart enough to give details about the drivers. Guess who has the
> copyright on all three? That's right, Microsoft.
>
> GSpot also lists the actual driver files, for example msaud32.acm for
> Windows Media Audio. And it is sitting where it belongs in the Windows
> folder in the sub folder:system32.
>
> So the bottom line is Vista is so dumb, it tells its Media Player to
> go out to the web and download a copy of a driver it already had in
> its system32 folder but regardless it can't play it's audio, yet every
> other player on my system has no problem playing the file correctly.
>
> Now I'm sure these bug reports will bunch up the shorts of some MVP's
> here because I keep proving that Vista is buggy and they keep trying
> to blame hardware vendors or other software developers while in fact
> many the problems are with Windows itself...like it always has been.
>
> The truth seems to be Vista is a hog with a new silk dress. It may
> look prettier but underneath its still the old pig Windows always was
> in so many ways.
>

Better to keep your mouth closed and let people "think" you are a fool,
than open it and **confirm** the fact!

Divx works fine here and I can view any of the 160 Divx movies I have on my
box.

Maybe if you presented your problems in a more intelligent manner and kept
your ranting out of your posts, people would be more inclined to assist you.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!



"Adam Albright" <> wrote in message
news:...
>I thought maybe I should relax a little instead of fighting with Vista
> for hours and hours. So this morning I was reviewing my extensive
> video collection which includes some funny web vids, some people sent
> me or I found, some I made over the years. All contain both video and
> audio tracks. These files span just about every audio/video file type
> there is.
>
> Well it was going ok viewing them in Vista's new Media player. Till I
> hit one file. It started to load then popped up a warning box and
> asked if I wanted to download a audio codec. I say yes. It goes out on
> the web, comes back, seems to load the codec it claimed it needed or
> does a decent job of faking it. In typical Microsoft fashion Media
> Player starts to play the video, but oops, the video portion plays ok,
> but still no audio.
>
> What Vista attempted to install was the Windows Media Audio Codec.
>
> Just to help Vista out, I reboot to be sure the "new" codec gets
> properly installed and registered. Naturally that didn't make a bit of
> difference. Dumb Vista repeats the same steps, again goes out on the
> web and again asks if I want it to "find" a codec it claims it needs,
> so IT (Media Player) can play the file then again fails to play the
> audio portion.
>
> I guess this is a improvement since in earlier versions of Media
> Player it often would nag it didn't understand the file format and
> just died or took you to some useless web page. The kicker of course
> is there isn't anything wrong with this file. It plays fine including
> the audio, in every other player I have and I have many.
>
> So being in a playful mood I check further. Considering working with
> and creating videos is what I do, I know a lot of about what's needed
> and what can go wrong. So I use a simple and FREE little tool called
> GSpot to open the video file that won't play correctly in Media Player
> 11.
>
> The purpose of GSpot is to tell you specifics of files you want to
> play, WHAT codec was used to compress the file, what's needed to
> uncompress, the file format, if there is file corruption, etc..
>
> It turns out the file in question is a DivX 5 file. Very common. Media
> Player can't handle it. But wait... that's BS. GSPot is of course way
> smarter then Media Player because it can do what Media Player is
> apparently too stupid to do, namely scan my system and show which
> codecs if any can play this file. It says I have three such codecs;
>
> Windows Media Audio
> Windows Media Audio Decoder
> WM Audio Decoder DMO
>
> GSpot also says that DirectShow finds a codec and also should be able
> to play it.
>
> Are you understanding yet?
>
> THIS IS HOW DUMB WINDOWS REALLY IS!
>
> If you click on the names of the codecs shown above in GSpot it is
> smart enough to give details about the drivers. Guess who has the
> copyright on all three? That's right, Microsoft.
>
> GSpot also lists the actual driver files, for example msaud32.acm for
> Windows Media Audio. And it is sitting where it belongs in the Windows
> folder in the sub folder:system32.
>
> So the bottom line is Vista is so dumb, it tells its Media Player to
> go out to the web and download a copy of a driver it already had in
> its system32 folder but regardless it can't play it's audio, yet every
> other player on my system has no problem playing the file correctly.
>
> Now I'm sure these bug reports will bunch up the shorts of some MVP's
> here because I keep proving that Vista is buggy and they keep trying
> to blame hardware vendors or other software developers while in fact
> many the problems are with Windows itself...like it always has been.
>
> The truth seems to be Vista is a hog with a new silk dress. It may
> look prettier but underneath its still the old pig Windows always was
> in so many ways.
>

On Tue, 13 Feb 2007 21:31:35 -0500, "Richard Urban"
<> wrote:

>Better to keep your mouth closed and let people "think" you are a fool,
>than open it and **confirm** the fact!
>
>Divx works fine here and I can view any of the 160 Divx movies I have on my
>box.
>
>Maybe if you presented your problems in a more intelligent manner and kept
>your ranting out of your posts, people would be more inclined to assist you.

I love you too. :-)

Your obvious lack of knowledge is showing. Many DivX files come in a
AVI wrapper. That's probably why Media Player gets hung up. It thinks
it is trying to play a plain vanilla AVI file when its a DVX variant
of which there are many.

I'm so sorry my post was over your head.

Go back and read it again. Slowly. I don't have a problem, I
DOCUMENTED a problem Windows has. Specifically Media Player is is a
part of Windows by default. It stumpled, none of my other video/audio
players did.

You have 160 DivX movies. Wow, I'm impressed. I have thousands in many
different flavors, hence the problem. Now what was that you were
saying fools should do Richie?

Why not post this in the Vista general group? It's not a setup question.

CH

"Adam Albright" <> wrote in message
news:...
>I thought maybe I should relax a little instead of fighting with Vista
> for hours and hours. So this morning I was reviewing my extensive
> video collection which includes some funny web vids, some people sent
> me or I found, some I made over the years. All contain both video and
> audio tracks. These files span just about every audio/video file type
> there is.
>
> Well it was going ok viewing them in Vista's new Media player. Till I
> hit one file. It started to load then popped up a warning box and
> asked if I wanted to download a audio codec. I say yes. It goes out on
> the web, comes back, seems to load the codec it claimed it needed or
> does a decent job of faking it. In typical Microsoft fashion Media
> Player starts to play the video, but oops, the video portion plays ok,
> but still no audio.
>
> What Vista attempted to install was the Windows Media Audio Codec.
>
> Just to help Vista out, I reboot to be sure the "new" codec gets
> properly installed and registered. Naturally that didn't make a bit of
> difference. Dumb Vista repeats the same steps, again goes out on the
> web and again asks if I want it to "find" a codec it claims it needs,
> so IT (Media Player) can play the file then again fails to play the
> audio portion.
>
> I guess this is a improvement since in earlier versions of Media
> Player it often would nag it didn't understand the file format and
> just died or took you to some useless web page. The kicker of course
> is there isn't anything wrong with this file. It plays fine including
> the audio, in every other player I have and I have many.
>
> So being in a playful mood I check further. Considering working with
> and creating videos is what I do, I know a lot of about what's needed
> and what can go wrong. So I use a simple and FREE little tool called
> GSpot to open the video file that won't play correctly in Media Player
> 11.
>
> The purpose of GSpot is to tell you specifics of files you want to
> play, WHAT codec was used to compress the file, what's needed to
> uncompress, the file format, if there is file corruption, etc..
>
> It turns out the file in question is a DivX 5 file. Very common. Media
> Player can't handle it. But wait... that's BS. GSPot is of course way
> smarter then Media Player because it can do what Media Player is
> apparently too stupid to do, namely scan my system and show which
> codecs if any can play this file. It says I have three such codecs;
>
> Windows Media Audio
> Windows Media Audio Decoder
> WM Audio Decoder DMO
>
> GSpot also says that DirectShow finds a codec and also should be able
> to play it.
>
> Are you understanding yet?
>
> THIS IS HOW DUMB WINDOWS REALLY IS!
>
> If you click on the names of the codecs shown above in GSpot it is
> smart enough to give details about the drivers. Guess who has the
> copyright on all three? That's right, Microsoft.
>
> GSpot also lists the actual driver files, for example msaud32.acm for
> Windows Media Audio. And it is sitting where it belongs in the Windows
> folder in the sub folder:system32.
>
> So the bottom line is Vista is so dumb, it tells its Media Player to
> go out to the web and download a copy of a driver it already had in
> its system32 folder but regardless it can't play it's audio, yet every
> other player on my system has no problem playing the file correctly.
>
> Now I'm sure these bug reports will bunch up the shorts of some MVP's
> here because I keep proving that Vista is buggy and they keep trying
> to blame hardware vendors or other software developers while in fact
> many the problems are with Windows itself...like it always has been.
>
> The truth seems to be Vista is a hog with a new silk dress. It may
> look prettier but underneath its still the old pig Windows always was
> in so many ways.
>

On Tue, 13 Feb 2007 10:46:32 -0600, Adam Albright <> wrote:

Snipped to focus on the problem with less "noise"; scroll down for my
follow-up questions...

>video collection which includes some funny web vids, some people sent
>me or I found, some I made over the years. All contain both video and
>audio tracks. These files span just about every audio/video file type

>I hit one file. It started to load then popped up a warning box and
>asked if I wanted to download a audio codec. I say yes. It goes out on
>the web, comes back, seems to load the codec it claimed it needed ...
>Player starts to play the video, video portion plays ok, but no audio.

That's a common way for "wrong codec" to present, though here I as
often see "great sound, no picture".

>I use a simple and FREE little tool called GSpot to open the video
>file that won't play correctly in Media Player 11.

>It turns out the file in question is a DivX 5 file. GSPot ...
>show which codecs if any can play this file.

>Windows Media Audio
>Windows Media Audio Decoder
>WM Audio Decoder DMO

>GSpot also says that DirectShow finds a codec and also should be able
>to play it.

>GSpot also lists the actual driver files, for example msaud32.acm for
>Windows Media Audio. And it is sitting where it belongs in the Windows
>folder in the sub folder:system32.

Do you have other files of exactly the same type (as confirmed by
GSpot)? If so, do they play naturally in WMP?

Does the problem audio file play correctly in other media players,
e.g. WinAmp, IView, whatever?

What is the file name .ext for the problem file?

Does it help to change this .ext?

If only this file fails to work, then : Is the length of the file a
round multiple of the cluster size? If so, it may be that an AutoChk
or ChkDsk pass "fixed" it by truncating the chain.



>--------------- ---- --- -- - - - -
Saws are too hard to use.
Be easier to use!
>--------------- ---- --- -- - - - -