windows media player

[piggy]

every time im on the net and want to view a media file as soon as i try IE just closes down, do you think there could be a program conflict or is it something else any help appreciated.

[vegyjones]

Is this a vote...

I'll go Something Else!

[GlosRFC]

Some possible solutions:

1. Microsoft issue a lot of security updates because of flaws in Media Player. It might be that you're missing an update that's relevant for your particular version of Media Player so go to windowsupdate.microsoft.com and manually install all critical updates and service packs.

2. You don't say what version of Media Player you use. This site http://www.nwlink.com/~zachd/pss/pss.html lists details of many crashes that can be caused by incorrect installations, software conflicts, or other problems.

3. Bear in mind that Media Player needs a lot of other things to be installed correctly in order to run such as your video/sound card, dynamic link libraries, codecs etc. Most of the time, there's nothing actually wrong with Media Player - it's just that it's so sensitive that it picks up flaky installations of underlying components far better than other software. You can muddle along with an incorrectly installed sound driver, for example, and Win Amp or Real Player wouldn't care less but Media Player would crash.

4. You can try reinstalling Media Player again. The installer (mpsetup.exe or mpsetupxp.exe) should be in c:\program files\windows media player\installer and it will check for, and reinstall, any missing components. If you've uninstalled Media Player first, then make sure you run the reinstall program twice.

5. You might have Media Player embedded into your browser or possibly a browser help object that's conflicting with that embedding process. You can check the latter by clicking on Tools, Manage Add-ons and seeing if there's anything in there that could be conflicting or is something you don't recognise. Click the object and then select the disable option to see if that makes a difference. For embedding, that requires ActiveX controls so check that you have the latest ActiveX files from the Microsoft site.

6. Part of that embedding might also include the Media Bar that was added to IE5/6 and IE6 SP1. Similar to the Favourites or Search Bar, it is shown on the right hand side of your browser window. You can check if you have it installed by clicking on View, Explorer bar and seeing if Media Bar is mentioned. If not, click on Help, About and you should be able to see which version of IE you have. The Media Bar was removed as part of Service Pack 2 because it was buggy and also left a gaping security hole that could be exploited. So if the Media Bar is installed or, if it's not installed but you still have an earlier version of IE, download SP2 from Microsoft.

[piggy]

glos ive uninstalled everything ive installed since it started doing this and have now installed wmp 10 the latest version but still no joy :(