This is not a major problem, but if someone here knows the answer maybe I can fix it.

Any time following a fresh re-boot of Windows Vista, the first time I try to run Windows Media Player (by double-clicking an *.mp3 file, or by trying to play an *.mp3 file from within an application (like MP3TS, or Copy Trans Manager, or I suppose any application that allows such) the file loads, and WMP just sits there for about 30 seconds, then without my doing anything else the file begins to play.

Subsequent attempts to play the same or other files give instant results. Only on the first time following a re-boot do I get this delayed behavior.

Any idea what's going on?

tanstaafl.

30 seconds is a network timeout. It's trying to communicate with a server it can't reach I'll bet.

I'll bet either it's trying to look up media information, or doing some kind of DRM authentication.

But why only the first attempt following bootup? After that, it opens/plays any *.mp3 file instantly.

tanstaafl.

Windows Vista (and many other modern OSes) cheats during boot up. They often show the desktop prior to the OS being fully started. Some services, including networking related ones may not be fully running by the time the user can launch a program. That program will then have to wait for the services to be ready.

It's also possible Windows Media Player is starting a service on it's own the first time it runs, and repeated attempts don't have the delay associated with that. Any service marked manual can be started by a program if it is needed. Based on your comment that this happens the first time at any point, this is more likely to be the cause then my first explaination.

Also
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=windows+media+player+deleted+my+music
oh, wait, that's the wrong search. ;-)

http://www.google.com/search?q=windows+media+player+slow+first+time

Or, it's getting a network timeout like I said, and is just smart enough not to try it again a second time.

I may have unintentionally misled you... I timed the delay carefully just now, and it was not 30 seconds as I said earlier, but 16.8 seconds. When I'm waiting for it to start playing, it seems longer...

tanstaafl.

Possibly, though I question the network timeout explanation, only because there really isn't a standard. Timeouts will vary by protocol, driver, program, and OS. Plus, I get to cheat a little, since Doug did just reveal 30 seconds was the perceived delay, not the exact delay.

Doug, if you want an easy way to test the services theory, we can try something at the command prompt. Do this after a clean boot, and after the system seems to have settled down.

Before you start Media Player for the first time, run this command:


That command should return a number. Then fire up an MP3 to play, and run the command again, see if the number changes.

net start is outputting what services are currently in the started state. We then pipe the input into the find command. /C is search for a string and count how many lines contain it. /V inverts the search to count how many lines the string did not appear in, then "azazaz" is a garbage string. The end result is counting how may lines of output net start generated each time. If the number goes up in the second run, it means services were started that were in a manual state. To remove the delay the first time a song is played, you could then track down whatever service it is and add it to the automatic startup setting.

On a Windows 7 VM, I had 60 as the pre MP3 number, and 61 when Media Player opened.

Wow, for a moment you scared me . I thought WMP was doing the same disasters as iT, and I did go and read the articles and pages in that search! Don't do this again!

Hehe. Well, the true lesson is that any software can be buggy, or perceived as such, resulting in data loss (as the millions of hits shows for WMP, much like iTunes). Proper backups is really the only correct solution. Software, no matter who writes it or what company supports it will have bugs, sometimes leading to disastrous results. Even if it's not a bug, a users action may cause loss, due to lack of understanding when presented with an odd dialog.

I misunderstood you.

All the pages I've read in the WMP search show clearly that the type of damage made by WMP is not even nearly as bad as that made by iTunes. In >none< of the results I've read, from the search you proposed, files were actually removed from the FS by WMP.
Those two searches are almost a scientific proof, and indeed they are a very relevant statistic evidence, that iTunes is way more damaging to the user data than WMP.
-> In Windows OS environments.

I took your suggested search as a simple joke. If you meant to use it to support the idea that in Windows WMP is just as dangerous to user data as iTunes, or that "any software" can be, you just proved the opposite. Any software IS buggy. Some software is more buggy than other. There's no lesson to be learned other than generalizing to such degree makes no statistic or scientific sense.

And, by saying this, I am in no way supporting any OS war, or Corporation war. Microsoft vs Apple is just not an interesting topic to me, nor one which carries any logic value; precisely because I find it too generic.

O-kay...

tanstaafl.

Hrm, there goes the services theory. Though just to be clear, that first 94 was before you clicked on the .mp3, after a clean boot? That second arrow pointing at the first 94 makes it a little unclear.

I looked on my Windows 7 VM, and found Windows Media Player was starting a service called "UPnP Device Host". Can you check your services control panel to see if that service is set to manual, automatic or disabled?

Also, lets give Tony's theory a test (especially since I'm seeing a network related service startup here). Ready for some more DOS-fu?

This time, lets watch the network connections your computer is trying to make during this time. If we can find some stray communication to somewhere, blocking it locally may result in reducing or eliminating the delay.

You will want to run this before you open Media Player the first time, and preferably with all other network related programs on the computer closed including file explorer windows:

Then open a MP3, wait till after Media Player has finally started, then in the DOS window hit Ctrl-C to stop the netstat command. You will have a net.txt file in the directory you ran the command from. Take a quick look before you post it here, to see if there is any info it reveals that you don't want available to everyone. My plan is to look through it and see if I can identify a new connection related to Media Player.

What the command above does:
netstat - program to show various stats about what connections your computer is making to other computers over the network.
-a tells netstat to show all network connections, including ones in a wait state.
-b is a flag to show the EXE name that started the network call. Many will show as svchost, meaning it's a service generating the call.
-o also shows the PID of the process making the call, allowing some separation between all the svchost processes.
1 - Tells netstat to loop every second and make a new report. This is why Ctrl-C is needed this time, to exit the loop.
> net.txt is redirecting the output of netstat to net.txt, to make it easier to share instead of trying to copy and paste out of a fast scrolling DOS window.

My hope is that with this, we can see any network calls Media Player might be doing the first time to see if it is a timeout issue.

Correct. (1) Ran netstart. (2) Played the mp3 file (with delay). (3) Ran netstart again. (4) Played mp3 file without delay.

Not sure how to do that. I ran MSCONFIG, and the "UPnP Device Host" shows up as "Running". I didn't start it up myself, so does that mean it is set to automatic?

Didn't work out so well... (see below). I don't know what the x: is referring to, I don't have any such drive. My "network" such as it is consists of SWMBO's Macintosh connected via router, and as she is in Alaska at the moment her computer is turned off. Could that be it? Also connected to the router is my cable modem and Ooma VOIP phone system, but they don't talk to my computer.

The most likely culprit is my Tunebite program. It is a transcoder that sets up 28 virtual sound cards in memory, and transcodes up to 28 wma (or mp3) files simultaneously, playing them in 1:1 real time. However, it is NOT my default. My default audio source is a set of USB headphones.

The net.txt file grows pretty quickly, I shut it off after about two seconds and it still runs a couple of hundred lines. I've attached it along with the screen shot. If you want I can let it run longer. (The first time I ran it it came to 783K!) I didn't see anything too compromising in it, unless it has the URLs of my favorite porn sites.

Please don't spend a lot of time and effort worrying about this, unless it is the sort of challenge that you find fun and entertaining. At worst, for me, it is a once-a-day 20-second inconvenience.

tanstaafl.

I take that back. I changed the directory path to the Tunebite executable so Windows couldn't find it, re-booted, and WMP still took 25 seconds to begin playing an mp3 file.

Next I downloaded and installed another music player (RealPlayer), rebooted, and played an mp3 file with it. It started instantly. Then, without rebooting I tried WMP. It performed with the usual 20-25 second delay. I rebooted, then tried a wmv video file and it started up after a 7 seconds delay. Subsequent plays of that or other video files, or of mp3 files, started instantly.

So, the problem seems to be with WMP, RealAudio does not have the delay, and in WMP both audio and video files are delayed on startup but only after a reboot. Tunebite seems to be off the suspect list.

tanstaafl.

The way I always go into Services is via a right click on My Computer (on the desktop, or the Computer entry in the start menu), and picking Manage from the menu. Services will be on the left, and then you can find the UPnP Device Host in the list on the right. Double clicking it will bring up it's properties, including if it is set to start automatically or not. Much like Bonjour, this is a service related to network sharing. If you have nothing that streams music from Windows Media Player, try setting the service to disabled to see if it has any impact.



Not sure what that error is about, as the output in the text file looked right. Lets try it again, but this time zip the file before uploading it. It will get large (and highly compressable), but what I plan to do is split it up and see what differences appear during the time it's loading. That will point to what network interactions (if any) is slowing down the first play. Also, make sure to close as many programs as possible before doing this. The last report showed Firefox open with active connections, so it pollutes the output a little bit.


No worries, I'm just spending idle time on the issue. This type of Windows troubleshooting I don't mind too much, as it's a way to keep my legitimately needed skills up to date. Malware removal and all that crap, yeah, other people can handle those issues

Oh... neat trick. I didn't know about that one!

Zip file attached. I let it run out to about 6200 lines. However, only 111 of the lines are unique, the other 6000+ are duplicates, including 180 "wmpnetwk.exe" and 330 "Can not obtain ownership information" lines, those two being the most popular. There, now that I've done that in-depth analysis for you, I'm sure the answer will be right at your fingertips.

tanstaafl.

I had a thought that perhaps it might be useful to see the netstat information while starting up WMP. So attached are a pair of files.

In the first I started netstat following a reboot, then with netstat running I started WMP. It took about 16 seconds for the mp3 to start playing.

For the second file, I repeated the process, except the computer was not freshly re-booted and WMP had been run and had played an mp3 file. WMP started instantly in that case.

Maybe there will be something useful there, maybe not.

tanstaafl.

Yep, that is what I was looking for, sorry for not making that more clear earlier. Netstat is dumping a full list of all network connections it sees every second to that text file, and the goal is to see if Windows Media Player is creating any new network connections that are timing out. If the problem is network related, this will help narrow down what exactly on the network (or internet) that is delaying the first start. It could be an attempt to look for local devices to share music with, and a bad timeout there, or it's trying to talk to an internet server for some reason. Either case should be caught with the netstat.

I'll look into the file you posted soonish.

Another bit of possibly useful information. After a fresh reboot, WMP will play a WMA file without hesitation, but even after doing that, the first MP3 file it plays will have a delay, this time of 34 seconds. Subsequent MP3 files start instantly.

tanstaafl.

There were some things that did stand out in that last network dump, but I need more idle time to poke at it. This month has been crazy busy so far, but I'll get to it at some point. Still a very strange issue. The WMA bit is odd.

If WMA plays immediately, but MP3 takes a long hit before first play, perhaps it's a codec issue? It's as though the DLL is taking a long time to load, but once it's loaded, it's fine.

Yes, and I actually had similar issues a while back, now that i think about it, after installing Win7Codec (http://shark007.net/).

So, are you recommending this?

I don't have any idea what codec(s) are installed on my computer, nor do I know how to find out. I did notice one thing about the one you linked to:

The following filetypes are enabled and SUPPORTED by the installation of the Vista Codec Package.
amr | mpc | ofr | divx | mka | ape | flac | evo | flv | m4b | mkv | ogg | ogv | ogm | rmvb | xvid

It doesn't list MP3. Is that because all codecs include MP3 and I'm not smart enough to know that?

Another interesting thing of note is that the description of this codec says it will automatically delete most other installed codecs during its installation. That makes me a bit nervous...

And, of course the fact that my existing codec, whatever it may be, has worked without problems for years makes me wonder about needing to replace it.

Do other media players (like Real Audio) have their own codecs built in, or do they use whatever codecs are the system default? Real Audio will play an MP3 file without delay.

I dunno...

tanstaafl.

edit:

Audio Codecs
Type Name Format Binary Version
ACM Microsoft IMA ADPCM CODEC 0011 imaadp32.acm 6.0.6000.16386
ACM Microsoft CCITT G.711 A-Law and u-Law CODEC 0007 msg711.acm 6.0.6000.16386
ACM Microsoft GSM 6.10 Audio CODEC 0031 msgsm32.acm 6.0.6000.16386
ACM Microsoft ADPCM CODEC 0002 msadp32.acm 6.0.6000.16386
ACM Fraunhofer IIS MPEG Layer-3 Codec (decode only) 0055 l3codeca.acm 1.9.0.402
ACM Microsoft PCM Converter 0001
DMO WMAudio Decoder DMO 0160, 0161, 0162, 0163 WMADMOD.DLL 11.0.6001.7000
DMO WMAPro over S/PDIF DMO 0162 WMADMOD.DLL 11.0.6001.7000
DMO WMSpeech Decoder DMO 000A, 000B WMSPDMOD.DLL 11.0.6002.18034
DMO MP3 Decoder DMO 0055 mp3dmod.dll 11.0.6001.7000

He wasn't recommending installing that codec package. He was saying that he had a similar problem to yours after installing that codec package.

Some players use the builtin codecs, some don't.

Is this your issue ?

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Foru...7-0743efa12908/

I would avoid codec packs like the plague. I have never had anything good come from installing those things, and every time I've done it (which admittedly hasn't been for 7-9 years), I've always felt like pieces of it were always on there no matter how hard I tried to uninstall it. I recall one time that I reformatted my computer partly because a codec pack installation screwed everything off and reinstalling Windows was just easier than fixing it.

Switching to VLC for all video playback made life a lot happier. Frankly, Doug, I'd recommend just using another program for audio playback. I wouldn't really recommend VLC for audio, but I'm sure there are some nice alternatives out there. I've never really liked WMP very much, and I'm not surprised it's acting weird.

One thing you could try is installing the Zune software. It's actually really nice for music playback. It has a very attractive interface. It's very much form over function, but it's still as functional as other music software out there (which isn't saying much).

No, I do not! Silly of me to even include the link to their homepage. That codec package terribly slowed the start of many media files types! Do NOT install it. I mean, nothing terrible, and it was also very easily fixable, but still...

Edit:
Also, Doug, just to clarify, I was actually wandering if you had installed any codec package, because that could have been the cause of your problem.
For the records, I've used successfully K-lite codec pack in the past, but again, I would only approach codec packs if you find out you NEED them. Otherwise, don't bother. The reason why I used them a while back is because at the time WMP was not properly playing DVDs and with k-lite it would. And, I only used those in some machines where it was for various reasons not recommendable to install dedicated DVD player software. That was several years ago. On my machines I've tried several codec packs in time, just out of curioisty. Most of them did not harm, but others did.

As to Zune, there is a lot of room for improvement, but I love it. It is very configurable, GUI is nice, I also find it a lot form over function as Matt said, but I just like it. And it looks great while playing. I am not sure it plays as many formats as WMP, but it is great for MP3s. +1 for Zune.

Exactly, 100%, right down to the response about only affecting Windows Vista and WMP v11.x.

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a solution. At least, not yet.

tanstaafl.

A couple weeks ago with great trepidation I installed a RealAudio player. I remember 10 or 15 yeas ago that I and everyone I knew avoided Real Audio because the installation program would without asking set RealAudio as the default for everything it could possibly play and possibly a few things it couldn't. There were a lot of unhappy people about that. They seem to have cleaned up their act, and now RealAudio just hides until I specifically call it up. Much better.

It also has a nice little feature that any time I play just about any sort of video it puts a small clickable icon in the upper right corner of the video that says "Download this video", and it works.

That said, about the only time I actually do anything with MP3 playback on my computer is to play a few seconds of the beginning of a file to check audio quality, or if the tag information on an audio book doesn't have the narrator's name, I'll play a bit of track one to get the information. All I ever do is double-click a filename and give a quick listen. The fact that the first time each day I do that entails a half minute delay is annoying, but hardly on the scale of, say, a Republican controlled Congress.

I may just change the default association for MP3 to be RealAudio instead of WMP and see how that works out. I had thought this little problem would be simple, just a "You dummy -- change this parameter to be that and it'll work right" sort of thing.

Funny how that never seems to work out.

tanstaafl.

Edit: Yeah, that works [RealAudio]
db

I suppose WMP 12 was never made available for Vista, was it?

... Also, if that's what you need to do, how's Winamp these days? I haven't used it for years, but I remember the Lite version was still quick and effective. I see it is still available on their website, and only 3.5 MB in size, which is promising!
http://download.nullsoft.com/winamp/client/winamp5621_lite_en-us.exe

In Doug's case, Winamp might just be overkill.

Doug, if that's all you're doing with MP3 files, I'd definitely recommend just installing VLC or Media Player Classic or something lightweight like that. Every time I hear the word RealPlayer I cringe. I'm sure their software is better these days, but I've heard the same thing about the latest Norton products, and I avoid them like the plague too...

Yes, I was uncertain to about that, but I kind of remembered the old winamp lite (not the Free version, the Lite one, even smaller) was small enough, and out of curiosity I downloaded and installed it removing all options but the player itself. It is acttually very small and blazing fast, at least here on my laptop (which is just an average/slow machine these days), and it takes, when idle, just 3 MB of RAM. All considered, I think it's worth a try!

Winamp certainly always used to be lighter weight than RealPlayer...

I hope other software venders look at RealAmp as an object lesson. 10--15 years after their "take over the computer" days, people are still gun-shy about them. They seem to be behaving themselves these days, but I was very nervous about putting it into my computer this time around.

Re: Norton. I haven't played with them in 10 years or so, but the last time I did Norton brought my computer to a crawl and took over everything. It will be a long time before I ever allow Symantec near my computer again. I remember the "good old days" when Peter Norton was Norton Utilities and there was nothing out there even remotely as good.

"Good old Days"... ah, yes, manually parsing IRQs and DMAs, restructuring the start-up order to maximize memory use efficiency, a big word-processing program would be about 10 megabytes and come on eight floppy-disks and take an hour and a half to install and configure. I'm telling you, this GUI stuff is just a passing fad, and it'll only be a matter of time before we get back to real computing and the ever-useful and friendly C:> prompt!

tanstaafl.