The Hindu Business Line : Trouble playing Windows Media

I am currently using a PC with 2.4GHz Intel Pentium P4 Processor and D865GVHZ Motherboard. I have got Windows XP system loaded on my system. I have a query with regard to the Windows Media.

Till recently I was able to use my PC for watching TV with a TV tuner card, use a web cam, and see videos through VCDs. Of late, I am having problems with all the three. When I try to see the VCD through the Windows Media Player 10 (latest version), I get a message `Specified Module not Found.' I have tried to troubleshoot to some extent. I reloaded the Windows Media player again and reloaded the latest Video Card Driver - Inte(R) 82865G Graphics Controller. But the problem still persists.

I tried to use the Realplayer for playing the VCD files. I am able to play the Audio with RealPlayer but not able to play the VCD. When I try to play the VCD, the player closes automatically without any message. However, I am able to see the Video Streaming through the Internet with the RealPlayer and not so with the Windows Media. The file format for the VCDs is typically AVSEQ01.DAT. I presume these are MPEG files.

When I try to play the cable TV with my PC, I get the Panel for the TV Tuner, but not the TV Screen. I get an error message "Cannot instantiate the Filtergraph." I get the same message with the Web Cam also. I was able to use all the above devices till recently. Do I need to reformat the hard drive, which I want to avoid because of the data and the programs in my hard disk. The problems seem to have cropped up from the time I tried to defragment my hard drive. However, the rest of the system seems to be working all right. Please suggest a solution.

A. Sudhakar

As a first step, you need to find out if the problem caused is related to the TV tuner card or the Video adapter. To find this, you need to uninstall the TV tuner driver using the device manager (right click on My Computer and click on Manage -{gt} Device Manager) and also uninstall any software you installed for it from its CD. When uninstalling, if you are asked to remove "Shared Files (Dlls)" please select Yes, shut down the computer, remove the tuner card and start the PC. Now try playing a VCD and use the Web cam. If the problem is resolved, the problem causer is the tuner card. Now shut down the PC and plug in the tuner card, preferably into a different PCI slot, and reinstall the driver and software. Also check the TV tuner cards settings related to video (NTSC, PAL, Display Mode etc.)

If you face the same problem even after the tuner card's drivers and software are removed, then check the following: See that you have the latest DirectX software loaded (9c), if not load it, click on Start -{gt} Run and type in dxdiag, and press enter. In the dialog that appears, please select the Display tab, under the header "Notes" you should see "No problems found", otherwise do as suggested in the message there.

Finally, uninstall Media Player 10 and reload a lower version 7 or 9 and once the problem is resolved, update it with 10.

If all fails, you still have an option to do an in-place upgrade of your XP installation instead of reinstalling it so that you need not load your applications again but will only replace the OS-related files with the original ones.

For this, please refer the article at http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/ew/2006/01/02/stories/2006010200240400.htm

Please e-mail us at eworld@thehindu.co.in

if you have queries on computer usage or if you find an interesting way of using a computer.

Solution by G. Rajah

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