Have a niggling little error that has appeared

Opening certain WMV/MPEG clips now produces the following error :

"At least one of the pins involved in the operation is already connected."

There is a "web search" option which produces this :

"You've encountered error message 80040204 while using Windows Media Player.

Additional information is not currently available for this error."

There is a line underneath which offers a yes/no response to :

"Was this information useful?"

But there is no "as much as a sore ar*e to a jockey" option.

I have googled L/R&C on this but nowhere is a solution proposed.

It seems to ba a missing/damaged "audio codecs" , whatever that is.

For hysterical reasons , I have a legacy install of XP Pro on the D partition

and when I boot from this there is no problem atall atall.

I have tried an "update" of XP on C and downloading and running

WM9CODECS.EXE (Windows media component setup) to no avail.

All (polite) suggestions gratefully received.

Well

I saw in another thread here something about "msconfig" and I'd never tried

this before so....

I was clicking about and found that on the "services" tab "Windows audio" was

unticked.

I rebooted from the D partition and found it was ticked there.

Reboot from C , msconfig and tick "Windows audio"

Restart and problem solved.

Yes , you are right , I am talking to myself. But at least I'm making some

kind of sense. Amn't I ?

hah, nice.. a least you solved it.

btw.. a great media player that seems to play EVERYTHING..inc dvds is vlc player. Never had any probs with it.

Site is: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ if you're interested.

A system retore would probably have solved your issue with WMP.

Looks like you've resolved the problem anyway, so I guess this thread is closed.

geoffphuket

Joe, just a wee bit of advice, but there are much better media players to use.

Off the top of my head I would say realplayer or DivX

both are free and can be downloaded from their official websites.

EDIT: sorry I never read the other post. Download DIVX and you will never get the codex error again.

Thanx guys for your comments.

Eek , I tried your thing out of curiosity and it was OK except it set the clip I tried it

on to open by default with itself. I like to make my own decisions. WMP didn't have

the problem , it was more of a general XP fragility thing.

Geoff , I could have just switched to XP on D but that would have meant re-installing

everything I had installed on C. I hope you are not under the illusion that people like

me take full back-ups ?

Just by the by , I had a slight "premature ejaculation" problem with left-button mouse

clicks (it's probably physical and not psychological) and tried to correct it by adjusting

the click-rate via the control panel. When I did this my "underbar" changed from pleasing

blue to yucky beige and the WMP problem appeared. When I did an "update" install of

XP I got my pleasing blue back but WMP still had a problem. When I fixed the WMP

problem the beige underbar came back.

One might wonder how Microsoft can sell this crap , but as the nuns used to say "It's

a mystery , you're not meant to understand it".

Thanx guys for your comments.

Eek , I tried your thing out of curiosity and it was OK except it set the clip I tried it

on to open by default with itself. I like to make my own decisions. WMP didn't have

the problem , it was more of a general XP fragility thing.

Geoff , I could have just switched to XP on D but that would have meant re-installing

everything I had installed on C. I hope you are not under the illusion that people like

me take full back-ups ?

Just by the by , I had a slight "premature ejaculation" problem with left-button mouse

clicks (it's probably physical and not psychological) and tried to correct it by adjusting

the click-rate via the control panel. When I did this my "underbar" changed from pleasing

blue to yucky beige and the WMP problem appeared. When I did an "update" install of

XP I got my pleasing blue back but WMP still had a problem. When I fixed the WMP

problem the beige underbar came back.

One might wonder how Microsoft can sell this crap , but as the nuns used to say "It's

a mystery , you're not meant to understand it".

Sorry you mis-understood. I meant a sytem restore.......Control panel - Performance and maintenance - System restore

Sorry you mis-understood. I meant a sytem restore.......Control panel - Performance and maintenance - System restore

Thanx Geoff. Tis true. No matter how old you get you learn something new evey day.

my take on vlc is it is great for visual stuff... movies etc...

for music, personally I find foobar is a good alternative.

Sorry you mis-understood. I meant a sytem restore.......Control panel - Performance and maintenance - System restore

Thanx Geoff. Tis true. No matter how old you get you learn something new evey day.

I have Windows Home edition and do not have Performance and maintenance listed under control panel (only System for changing restore setting etc)

I have looked everywhere for System Restore. Where is it?.