Problem playing some .WMV's in IrfanView fixed by WMP 11 rollback
This is a variation on the oft-repeated, but since I fixed it myself, and I haven't seen this solution during my lengthy searches, I thought I'd post it for people to see.
Setup: IrfanView 3.95, 4.00, and 4.10 on WinXP Home (I tried rolling back IV along the way). All latest IV plugins downloaded in /plugins directory, no extras added.
As the title says, some .WMV's wouldn't play in IV, not using the external player, directshow, nothing! They would play in WMP (Windows Media Player). Opening these files with IV would do nothing but produce a dead process in the task manager; opening from an active IV window would lock up that instance of IV (Task Manager didn't even list it as non-responsive, although I had to force them to end). There was nothing in common that I could detect about the files (aside from being WMV's), or anything that set them apart: I used GSpot to check the encoding and they varied from WMP 7, 9, 11 (I know there's a previously noted problem with WMP 9 encoding). Anyway, I tried a bunch of things (as always, lots had changed before I noticed the problem), but what fixed it was using Windows Add/Remove Software to remove my upgrade to WMP 11 (which rolled it back to 10). Now, an interesting point: I saw the following in my web searches: "It is known that IV cannot handle DRM (Digital Rights Managment) protected files..." and when I rolled back WMP, I got a warning about how it might deregister any registered DRM (which I don't think I ever enabled, since I figure it means Microsoft will spy on my content). The WMV's weren't protected, but I wonder if this setting in WMP was a factor: I saw old posts about people rolling back from WMP 10 and 9, so maybe there's something wrong with Microsoft's upgrade settings, or maybe it gets pissy if you say "No thanks," to DRM?
Anyway, just wanted to put this out there in case somebody else has the same problem.
Gorno
Setup: IrfanView 3.95, 4.00, and 4.10 on WinXP Home (I tried rolling back IV along the way). All latest IV plugins downloaded in /plugins directory, no extras added.
As the title says, some .WMV's wouldn't play in IV, not using the external player, directshow, nothing! They would play in WMP (Windows Media Player). Opening these files with IV would do nothing but produce a dead process in the task manager; opening from an active IV window would lock up that instance of IV (Task Manager didn't even list it as non-responsive, although I had to force them to end). There was nothing in common that I could detect about the files (aside from being WMV's), or anything that set them apart: I used GSpot to check the encoding and they varied from WMP 7, 9, 11 (I know there's a previously noted problem with WMP 9 encoding). Anyway, I tried a bunch of things (as always, lots had changed before I noticed the problem), but what fixed it was using Windows Add/Remove Software to remove my upgrade to WMP 11 (which rolled it back to 10). Now, an interesting point: I saw the following in my web searches: "It is known that IV cannot handle DRM (Digital Rights Managment) protected files..." and when I rolled back WMP, I got a warning about how it might deregister any registered DRM (which I don't think I ever enabled, since I figure it means Microsoft will spy on my content). The WMV's weren't protected, but I wonder if this setting in WMP was a factor: I saw old posts about people rolling back from WMP 10 and 9, so maybe there's something wrong with Microsoft's upgrade settings, or maybe it gets pissy if you say "No thanks," to DRM?
Anyway, just wanted to put this out there in case somebody else has the same problem.
Gorno
