Windows Media Player Error

[farangsay]

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.

[farangsay]

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 ?

[eek]

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.

[geoffphuket]

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

[The Dan Sai Kid]

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.

[farangsay]

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".

[geoffphuket]

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

[farangsay]

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.

[kayo]

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

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

[rak sa_ngop]

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?.