Windows Media Player problems

Posted by: visuvius

Windows Media Player problems - 21/09/2005 14:56

I've had pretty good luck using Windows Media Player to manage all my music so when my sister got a new laptop and wanted to do the same, I recommended she use WMP to rip her cds and manage her stuff.

Problem is, the program locks up like crazy. This is on a brand new Dell 6000 with 2 gigs of ram. Windows and the program have all available updates downloaded and I'm not exactly sure what else the problem could be. It locks up when I try to change stuff in options, it locks up when changing tags in the library, it locks up when doing pretty much anything.

Anyone have ideas as to what the problem could be? Some sort of program conflict? There is not really anything installed on the laptop other than Norton and Microsoft Office.
Posted by: peter

Re: Windows Media Player problems - 21/09/2005 15:01

Quote:
brand new [...] locks up when doing pretty much anything

memtest86

Peter
Posted by: wfaulk

Re: Windows Media Player problems - 21/09/2005 15:15

Does just the program lock up or the whole operating system/computer?
Posted by: visuvius

Re: Windows Media Player problems - 21/09/2005 15:18

Its just the program but I'm about to run Memtest anyway.
Posted by: Robotic

Re: Windows Media Player problems - 21/09/2005 15:44

I recently got an email from Dell that referred to some updates wrt media player.
If you've updated everything from the MS side, try Dell next?
Posted by: visuvius

Re: Windows Media Player problems - 21/09/2005 15:52

Ahh, excellent recommendation.
Posted by: visuvius

Re: Windows Media Player problems - 21/09/2005 16:10

Damn. No updates available through Dell and the memory seems to be okay. What gives?
Posted by: tfabris

Re: Windows Media Player problems - 21/09/2005 16:31

Quote:
Damn. No updates available through Dell and the memory seems to be okay. What gives?


I never trust a factory installation of Windows. I always... a) Make sure I've got drivers for the PC's motherboard, IDE controller, and perhipherals on a CD-R, then, b) Nuke and pave.

PC manufacturers put so much crap onto new PCs these days that you never know what the heck you're getting. The situation you describe is common with factory-imaged disk drives. I've found that the above is the only way to get a new PC running smoothly.

This, of course, is a pretty serious undertaking, and it's not for the faint of heart or the inexperienced....

Alternatively, you can SEND THE BLOODY THING BACK TO DELL. It's under warranty. Tell them to give you a new one where media player works.
Posted by: mlord

Re: Windows Media Player problems - 21/09/2005 19:28

Related to this:

When "silvy" arrived (my first i9300 mega-notebook), it included an onboard run-once utility to create a genuine WinXP Installer CD from the "system recovery partition".

But "sam" arrived yesterday (our second i9300 mega-notebook, we like them!), and the onboard utility was no longer provided. At time of ordering, a "WinXP" install CD would have cost an extra $10, which we passed on. Instead, we just rang them up yesterday and explained that we needed one, and they're mailing it out gratis.

Not that we plan to run WinXP on these beasts, but it is handy once in a blue moon inside VMware under Linux -- for which a proper install CD is really handy.

Cheers
Posted by: visuvius

Re: Windows Media Player problems - 21/09/2005 20:51

Ok upon further dicking around, I think the main problem is WMP seems to be having massive issues with the mp3 tag information. Renaming, or using the "Advanced (pfff!) Tag Editor" locks it up for sure. Everything else seems to be working okay at this point.

I think we're going to be going with iTunes on this machine.
Posted by: Dignan

Re: Windows Media Player problems - 21/09/2005 21:02

Quote:
Ok upon further dicking around, I think the main problem is WMP seems to be having massive issues with the mp3 tag information. Renaming, or using the "Advanced (pfff!) Tag Editor" locks it up for sure. Everything else seems to be working okay at this point.

I think we're going to be going with iTunes on this machine.

I love my music organizer. I call it "folders" I just like having total control over the structure of my files. I've used iTunes and Picasa, but I didn't like the disconnect between the program and how the files were physically stored. I feel like I'm losing track of them. I may start using iTunes again, since you can set it up to not take control of your files.
Posted by: visuvius

Re: Windows Media Player problems - 21/09/2005 21:36

That is also an option. What is the latest/greatest/easiest program for editing tags? I wish you could edit them right through Windows like filenames and whatnot.
Posted by: Dignan

Re: Windows Media Player problems - 21/09/2005 21:52

Quote:
That is also an option. What is the latest/greatest/easiest program for editing tags? I wish you could edit them right through Windows like filenames and whatnot.

I use MP3TagStudio. It doesn't have a very good interface, which sometimes leads me to doing something I really didn't intend to do. I usually get around that by working on a copied folder of MP3s until I'm sure I got all the tags and filenames right.

Oh, and the other thing I don't think it's very good at is for editing multiple information in multiple tags at the same time. For instance, I find it hard to use this program to go through track by track entering song titles. I use it mostly for batch editing, like applying the same album/artist/year/genre to a group of songs. It's also invaluable in naming a group of files based on tags, or tagging a group of files based on filenames.

ps-I'm sorry if you are already familiar with the program
Posted by: visuvius

Re: Windows Media Player problems - 21/09/2005 22:03

Ah thanks for the recommendation. I was thinking of some other one I used years ago with "Advanced" in the name somewhere. I"ll try mp3TagStudio.

I realized that you actually can change the tag information through Windows Explorer by right clicking and going to properties. I'm trying to figure out how to change multiple files at once as far as Album and Artist info is concerned. It looks like you can do it but then it doesnt register the changes for all the tracks, just the first one. BAH!
Posted by: Robotic

Re: Windows Media Player problems - 21/09/2005 23:07

I use Self Renamer and it works, but I haven't worked with it enough to really make it my little b*tch... don't know if that's even possible.

Quote:
... you actually can change the tag information through Windows Explorer...


/runs off to try it.
Posted by: Dignan

Re: Windows Media Player problems - 22/09/2005 02:50

Yeah, sorry, I meant to tell you that you could enter the tags that way, but I guess I neglected to mention it because...well...it's Windows. I think your experience with it is about what you're going to get.