Windows Media Player and Browsers

[burntout]

Lately, I've been having problems with WMP working on my browsers. It doesn't work both with Portable Firefox nor Internet Explorer. It doesn't play any kind of streaming media. I always get this "Please verify that the path or filename is correct" error or "The specified stream is not recognized" error. The weird thing is the WMP interface in my browsers is that of the old version of WMP.. you know the black and brown one but I have WM10 installed in my PC. WMP works perfectly on its own... I only encounter trouble with it when it comes to browsers. I'm totally clueless about this so I really need your help guys.. I really appreciate it if anyone can help me. Thanks. :D

[Sylvander]

What is the 3 letter extension of the file being streamed?

Can you save the file to a folder on your HDD?

When saved, and you right-click on the file and click Play, does an appropriate player run and play the file ok?
Do you know what the best player is for that file type, and do you have it installed on your PC?
If it doesn't play ok, do you know how to change the default player [specified in the registry] for files with that 3 letter extension, to a player that plays it successfully?
If not I can tell you how.

[burntout]

I really can't identify the file extension since the Properties thing is not clickable. I'm guessing it's your usual .asf or any other common audio/video streaming file.

I can't save it too because the Save As thing is not clickable.

I don't really know much about registries and would glady appreciate your help.

And just to let you know.. this happens with every type of media i find in the web. Real Player works fine with my browser.. It's only with Windows Media Player that I encounter these problems.

[Sylvander]

I recently discovered that if I right-click on a link I can choose to open it in a separate window.
Then in that window I can right-click and "Save file as..." and save it to my HDD.
Then I can experiment with the file.

Assuming it's a ".wmv" file for example.
In Win98, to specify which program should Play the file...

1. Find the program you'd like to use as the default for [opening or] playing a wmv file.
In my case it's wmplayer.exe v7.10.00.3068 held in folder C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player.

2. So I go to...
Windows Explorer->View->Folder Options->File Types->Windows Media Audio/Video File, and highlight it, then Edit->Play->Edit.
In my case the "Application used to perform action" reads "C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\wmplayer.exe" /Play "%L", which is exactly as it should be.
If it were not, I'd need to click "Browse" and navigate to that file and choose it, then add the /Play "%L" with a space between wmplayer.exe" and /Play "%L". Then ok all the dialogues.
Doing this puts settings in the registry.
The following is an alternative way of doing that.

3. Go to Start->Run->regedit->HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT and scroll down to the .wmv key. Open it and read the "Default->Data".
Mine reads WMVFile, so I scroll lower down to the key with that name.

4. I open the WMVFile\Shell\Play\Command key and read the "Default->Data", which is...
"C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\wmplayer.exe" /Play "%L" as in 2 above.
It's safer to set this value from outside regedit, but more interesting from inside.
I actually copied this value from the backup value below the default value as seen in the image below.
I didn't like the player the registry was set to use so I changed it and I did it here in the registry.
I always have backups of the whole registry around when doing this kind of thing.

[burntout]

I checked my registry and that is the exact thing that is there so I didn't do anything. I didn't do the backup though.. would that have any effect on my PC? If I download a media file from the internet it will work perfectly on my PC but if the media I'm trying to view or listen to is embedded in a webpage that's where I encounter problems. As I mentioned above, the weird thing is that the interface of the embedded WMP in my browsers is that of the old version even though I have the latest version of WMP installed in my PC. I'm not sure..but maybe it is one of the causes of the problem I'm encountering. Is still there any other solution?

[Whyzman]

Does this help?

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=206213

[Sylvander]

"I checked my registry and that is the exact thing that is there"
Looking good then.
And is the version of WMP at the address shown in the registry your latest version?
If so, then WMV files are correctly registered to be played by your latest version of WMP.
But what you need to find out is what file types are failing to stream?

"I didn't do the backup though.."
Depending on your version of Windows [which?], then Windows is probably making automatic backups of your registry [and more].
I urge you to set up a system of making [and restoring] image backups of your partition contents using a program that runs outside of the Windows environment and is loaded from a bootable disk [floppy or CD].

"would that have any effect on my PC?"
What is "that"? Making backups?
Making backups would not affect the working of your software.

"any other solution?"
I don't know enough to find one.
I thought that perhaps you had the wrong player registered to play the file types, or perhaps no player registered, but you say..."If I download a media file from the internet it will work perfectly on my PC".

"the weird thing is that the interface of the embedded WMP in my browsers is that of the old version even though I have the latest version of WMP installed in my PC"
That's definitely weird...
I thought that when a file was to be streamed, the player used would be that which is registered [on the client PC] to play the file type.

[Sylvander]

I've just used Whyzman's link to install QuickTime Alternative [QTA] and I can now play a video of my daughter Belly Dancing that has always been difficult to play because I won't install QuickTime.
And even when I did, the newest versions of QuickTime were too big for my old PC and I had to use an older version to get the video to play smoothly.
But QTA plays ok.

I notice the setup information makes mention of it setting itself up to play audio/visual material in web pages.

I also have RealPlayer installed. It's rather good.

Perhaps you should install these if you don't have them already.

You mentioned ".asf" files, so I checked mine and found that they wouldn't play using the registered default of...
C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\mplayer2.exe.
That player won't even run, so I checked if
C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\wmplayer.exe
would play these files ok, which it did, so I changed the default registered player to that and now the files play ok.

I wish I knew more about this kind of thing, but at least I know enough to get each type of file to play.

[Sylvander]

Found a copy of mplayer2.exe that works.
Swapped it into...
C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\mplayer2.exe
and altered the registry settings back to use that, and now that works when used as the default player for...
"Windows Media Audio/Video file" [asf & wm].

The point?
It's all fiddly-diddly stuff, but if you know how to do it you can get things working again.

[Sylvander]

I see that the QTA configuration dialog has settings for "Streaming Transport" & "Streaming Proxy".

[Sylvander]

And file type selection...
You choose which filetypes you want QTA to handle, and it [the configuration dialog/program] will make the necessary changes to the registry keys and data settings.