System freezes when trying to play ANY video files...

Try right clicking on "my computer" then "manage" the "event viewer" and see what kind of error reports are being logged. It could give a hint as to what is causing the freeze.

But first things first, have you already updated everything? I.e.,

Are you on XP2 with all the updates?
Updated video card drivers?
Updated motherboard chipset drivers?
Updated the media player software that is crashing to the latest version?

1: Try updating your sound card / graphics card drivers.
2: Update DirectX
3: Play around with sound / graphics acceleration in windows.
4: Download mplayer and try playing the file from there. It uses software decoding, but you can change it to Direct3d in the config file.

OMG me too.

I am having the exact same problem and it started just recently too. Whenever I open a video or even a DVD, no matter what player, first the video itself hangs but the audio keeps playing, and then the entire system hangs. Even the mouse stops moving. The video player itself opens fine, it just when I got to play a video it hangs.

First I tried rolling back various drivers and windows media player to WM9 (I was using WM10) but that didnt work. Then I completely formatted my computer and reinstalled everything with the latest drivers and still had the problem. So then I reformated again but this time only installed the bare drivers that Windows XP didnt come with which were SP2, my nforce2 motherboard drivers, printer driver, and mouse driver.

At this point the videos played great. I then installed the latest video card drivers for my ATI AIW 9700pro including the WDM driver for TV capablitities. Once I did this the problem started happening again. I figured it was a problem with something new in the latest video card drivers so I used the ATI uninstall program and completely cleaned my system of those drivers. I then went to windows update and downloaded the ATI drivers that they had posted (which were over a year old). The driver did not include the WDM driver or control center software, it was simply the video driver itself. I then played some more videos and they still played great.

At this point I was sure that the latest ATI drivers were to blame. I continued using my computer and turned off automatic updates in order to keep the system exactly how it was so no new drivers would automaticly install.

However, today, about 3 days after I got everything working, it all started happening again. I have not installed anthing new except Age of Empires 3 and the video still worked after installing it. I do not know what the hell is going on now. I have scanned my system for viruses and I only use mozilla firefox so spyware is kept to a minimum. Also, all my games play fine. Here are my system specs.

Shuttle nforce2 motherboard
ATI AIW 9700pro
1 gig kingston hyperX ram
Windows XP home with SP2 (I was using professional before I reinstalled so it happens on either OS)
Onboard nforce sound
Firefox 1.5.1 (also tried opera 8.5 and firefox 1.07 with no luck)
Windows Media player 10 ( have also tried ATI video player and VLCwith no luck)
Logitech G5 mouse with latest Logitech setpoint software
Epson cx6400 printer with latest drivers
Activesync 4.0 for my Dell 51v PDA
Microsoft .NET framework 2.0 (required for ATI drivers, I also tried . NET 1.1 with no luck)
AVG 7.1 virus scanner
Mini-media keyboard software

The only progams that I hav loading at startup are:
NVmixertray (for sound card)
AVG
Epson printer driver
Logitech mouse driver
Mini-media keyoboard driver

I opened the application event viewer which shows this whenever the system hangs

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Application Hang
Event Category: (101)
Event ID: 1002
Date: 2/11/2006
Time: 1:46:02 PM
User: N/A
Computer: CORY
Description:
Hanging application wmplayer.exe, version 10.0.0.3646, hang module hungapp, version 0.0.0.0, hang address 0x00000000.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 41 70 70 6c 69 63 61 74 Applicat
0008: 69 6f 6e 20 48 61 6e 67 ion Hang
0010: 20 20 77 6d 70 6c 61 79 wmplay
0018: 65 72 2e 65 78 65 20 31 er.exe 1
0020: 30 2e 30 2e 30 2e 33 36 0.0.0.36
0028: 34 36 20 69 6e 20 68 75 46 in hu
0030: 6e 67 61 70 70 20 30 2e ngapp 0.
0038: 30 2e 30 2e 30 20 61 74 0.0.0 at
0040: 20 6f 66 66 73 65 74 20 offset
0048: 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 00000000

Clicking on additional information at microsoft yields nothing. Also, it is not just Windows media player that hangs. Its any video player, so I dont think this is a windows media player problem.

In the system event viewer it also shows this on bootup

Event Type: Warning
Event Source: ati2mtag
Event Category: WDM
Event ID: 1049
Date: 2/11/2006
Time: 1:29:59 PM
User: N/A
Computer: CORY
Description:
SRB command failed – SRB_GET_DEVICE_PROPERTY
Data:
0000: 00 00 00 00 01 00 5a 00 ......Z.
0008: 01 00 00 00 19 04 00 80 .......€
0010: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0018: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0020: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........

I think that the ATI driver is trying to find the WDM driver which is not there because I did not reinstall it after reformatting my computer. As I said before, the videos were working just fine for the past 3 days that I didnt have WDM drivers installed so I dont think this is the problem.

If you have any ideas to try, please tell me. I hate having a freezing computer.

Update

I installed quicktime to see if .mov videos also freeze and it turns out that they play just fine. I was also able to play .mpeg videos in quicktime which I was not able to do in WMP. I then went back and tried playing some videos in WMP and all of a sudden everything is working again. I was thinking that it was some kind of codec problem that worked itself out when I installed quicktime. Everything then worked for about 3 days and then out of no where the problems just started occuring again. It almost seems like a virus is on my computer and keeps changing files wheneven I correct them, but my virus scanner has not picked up anything and I have not found any information on the net about this problem occuring from a virus. I dont think reformating again will make a difference because I have already tried that and the problem still happened. From what I have found on the net, this is what is happening to everyone with this type of problem as far as reformating not working.

This may be completely off base, but does anyone with this problem have a cracked version of Age of Empires 3 on their computer? This is the only game I have installed and I do not remember if I had the problem around the same time as installing the game. Although I think I had the game installed a few weeks before my problems.

I have the same problem that just started and I have been playing the same AOEIII game for a month now. However I did just install a geforce 7600gs

Same problem

Hi all!

I have same problem a month ago. Yesterday, i formatted HDD and installed Windows. And than, install video driver, and sound card driver...no problem, playing video. After......go to windows update, and install all updates.....
After SP2 install, video didn't played And processor 100% .... reset

Any idea everybody?

Icebob

I'm having the exact same problem here, is there anyway we could get this marked as urgent or something?

Erm..... try a diffrent media player???


I recommend v.l.c media player from videolan. free and trustworthy.


Good luck. sorry i couldent be more help.

i had this problem, a number of people have been having this same issue i have since found a rememdy - it turned out to be a driver issue, and i fixed my 7600GT by updating to the newest nvidia drivers. ATI people just try rolling back to really old drivers not recent ones but REALLY old ones that might sort it out, after a lot of playing around and installing 5 different driver releases i finally got one that worked. I hope this helps, i know its frustrating but keep plugging away and you'll sort the issues eventually

Regards,

Tom

This issue has nothing to do w/ formatting your hard drive. Will not change anything.

I have installed a ATi Radeon 9600 in my comp and now no video (player freezes, then Windows freezes) but games play great, just like for everyone else.
I have installed numerous driver versions, including software such as DirectX Eradicator, Driver Cleaner Pro (removes any trace of nVidida and ATi drivers from comp) installed numerous versions of DirectX and ATi drivers. I also removed all Video Codecs with Zoom Player Pro (it has a function to edit Registered Video Codecs, and uninstall them and install only Windows Native ones)

All I can say this is a DirectDraw issue, the problem is resolved if the Hardware Acceleration in Windows under Desktop->right click->Properties->Settings->Troubleshooting is lowered to "Disable all DirectDraw and Direct3D accelerations." The video will work fine, then again games wont work.

I tried upgrading my BIOS and that did not work either.
I also tried KernelStack registry fix for Norton Anti Virus 10.0, that has no effect on it.

ATi stopped creating updates for Win 2K drivers after Feb, 2006 so there is no
way of telling if newer drivers fixed the issue. I am going to toss that ATi Radeon 9600 card in the trash, actually I gonna litter by throwing it off the cliff from the cliff where I live because I want to see it smash and brake .
Wasted much of my time.

The last thing I am going to try is updating the Motherboard drivers, but unless you see this post edited (in which case you wont even know i wrote this) then the upgrade to my mother board drivers did not work.

A way ( I guess ) to go around it is to disable directdraw for all windows video but I say screw this, and disabling that is hasselish.

System specs

Athlon 3500 64bit
ASUS K8T800 Pro 3rd Eye Motherboard
BIOS Date: 2/29/2006
Some ram... forgot what. (2gb)
3x HD's, (2 WDC, 1 seagate)
ATI Radeon 9600 (duuh, soon to be off the cliff)
Windows 2000 Server Service Pack 4 (all the 10billion updates)
WMP 9
Norton Antivirus 10x
Only native codecs.

Maybe the PSU is being taxed a little too much here and there. Borrow a better one and try that. You never know.

Ok so I installed every ATi Catalyst driver from first version to Version 4.6.

VERSION 4.5 is the last version of Catalyst Driver that the video works with and also game graphics.
This turns out to be purely a driver issue by ATi, on other boards I read that nVidia have the same problems, for them it worked to change graphics cards. For me it would work to switch graphics cards too but I insisted to keep my Radeon 9600 instead of Radeon 7500 All-In-Wonder, which is older.
With the Radeon 7500 everything worked fine even with latest version of drivers.

Also updating Motherboard drivers did nothing for me.

DOWNLOAD OLD VERSIONS OF CATALYST DRIVER INSTALL PACKAGE HERE:
http://oldapps.com/old_version_ati.php

DOWNLOAD DRIVER CLEANER HERE:
http://video.terabass.com/web_files/DCPro.zip
Use Driver Cleaner Pro to remove any trace of ATi or nVidia drivers to downgrade/upgrade.

No need to mess with DirectX unless you need to upgrade to the latest version.

Meh

I run XP and i ahve the same problem im not sure if it will help any of you but mine was fixed by simply installing

XP codec Pack 2.0.6

i busted my head over this probelm for days once and i figured it out
this is the second time i had to do it because i reformated and forgot how i fixed it so hopefuly this post will help me in the future

Microsoft recently sent out an automatic update for radeon graphics card drivers. I declined the update because I still use catalyst 7.7 ->new drivers from ATI dont support AGP. The last drivers that ATI put out that 100% support AGP cards was v7.7

If you have a Radeon AGP card. you will not be able to do anything that uses directX 9.0 as it cannot send information over the new drivers to the graphics hardware.

To see if this is a problem for you go to start -> run -> in the cmd prompt type in dxdiag - run the direct 3d test and see if you pass or get an error

If you get an error ->

1. Click on Start, then Control Panel, then go to Add/Remove Programs.
2. At the top of the list you should see several ATI entries. Select the entry entitled ATI Software Uninstall Utility, and click Change/Remove.
3. You will be prompted to restart your system once the uninstall is complete.
4. Once restarted, check the Add/Remove Programs list again for any remaining ATI software.
5. If any ATI software is still listed, click Change/Remove on those entries to uninstall each one individually.
6. Next, please scroll through the list until you find an entry called DAO
7. Select DAO, then Click Change/Remove to uninstall this program.

Go to ATI website http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html

enter your OS , your card, click go

Go to the bottom of the screen that pops up look for link that says previous drivers and software

click this link - go down to Catalyst 7.7 and click

follow installation instructions