Windows Media Player 9 crashes my computer... help

[Carlos63_04]

First of all, I'd like to say hi to all. I'm glad i stumbled onto this site.

A but of history. I previously was using Windows ME (eeeww.. i know) and finally upgraded to Windows 2000 Professional. I went to Windows update and installed all the updates. When ever i play a video in WMP 9, my computer either crashes (needs a hard re-boot) or after a couple of seconds the video itself freezes and the sound continues. When its the case of the video freezing, I can minimize then maximize the player and the video plays a few more seconds then freezes again. When its the case of computer crash and i have to do a hard re-boot, after booting I sometimes get a blue screen stating "dumping physical memory to disk" and computer re-boots again. The same thing happens with streaming video. I have tried to uninstall and re-install WMP but it didnt help. I tried getting tech support from Microsoft (ha ha.. what a joke) but, after giving email address, got no help, just a bunch of spam. I downloaded the DivX player and my videos play fine on there but when it comes to streaming videos, the default is WMP. I'v come across a few posts in other boards with people having a similar problem so I know its not just me. Is there anyone that can shed some light? The following is my computer specs...


DirectX 4.09.00.0904 (DirectX 9.0c)
Operating System Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
OS Service Pack Service Pack 4

BIOS Type Award Medallion (07/20/01)
Communication Port Communications Port (COM1)
Communication Port Communications Port (COM2)
Communication Port ECP Printer Port (LPT1)
CPU Type Intel Pentium IIIE, 866 MHz (6.5 x 133)
Motherboard Chipset VIA VT82C694T Apollo Pro133T
Motherboard Name Asus TUV4X (6 PCI, 1 AGP Pro, 1 AMR, 4 DIMM)
System Memory 288 MB (SDRAM)

Video Adapter NVidia Riva TNT2 Model 64 (32 MB)
3D Accelerator nVIDIA RIVA TNT2 M64
Monitor ViewSonic 15GA-2 [15" CRT] (73139032)

Audio Adapter C-Media CMI8738/C3DX Audio Device

IDE Controller VIA Bus Master IDE Controller
Floppy Drive Floppy disk drive
Disk Drive WDC WD1200BB-00GUA0 (111 GB, IDE)
Disk Drive Maxtor 6E040L0 (40 GB, 7200 RPM, Ultra-ATA/133)
Optical Drive _NEC NR-7500A (8x/4x/24x CD-RW)
Optical Drive PIONEER DVD-ROM DVD-115 (16x/40x DVD-ROM)

 

[SOcRatEs]

Hello! Welcome to TechSpot

It sounds like a video driver or other driver conflict.
There is windows media player ver 10 out that might help.
Other wise start with updating all your drivers.

I see you have a via chipset, there is a new ver driver from via
called hyperion, either 500a or 4 in 1.
check your bios for newer one.

With the older video (onboard? shared ram?) if so
you may want to consider installing a new video card.
Ram will also dramatically increase performance.

Sorry to sound like a comercial but your system is feeling it's age.
Not that it's a bad system, it's just likely to have more and more
problems with new stuff like games, videos, and programs.
G'Luck

 

[gmcerlan]

Windows Media Player Crashes Computer part deux

I am having similar problems. Whenever I play any kind of video (media player or quicktime), my computer will freeze up and the mouse will scroll very slowly. After about twenty seconds, my computer will restart itself. The weird thing is that my computer will run perfectly if I don't try to play a video or movie. I have the latest drivers installed for my video card and windows media player.

At first, I thought it was my video card, so I got a new one. After installing, the problem still occurred. I thought there may be a chance that I received a faulty one, so I returned it and got a second one. After installing, problem still occurred. I played around with my computer and disconnected every non-essential hardware, but my computer still produced the same problem. Then I thought that there may be a slight chance that my second video card was faulty so I got it replaced a third time. After instalilng, problem still occurred. Then I completely reformatted my computer and just installed the video card and tried playing a video. Problem still occurred.

I am at a total loss. I recently built a new computer and I received most of my components from Newegg.com which provides real good equipment. My next idea was to replace the hard drive. I ordered a "Seagate Barracuda 250GB 7200 RPM Serial ATA150 Hard Drive" from Newegg and it should arrive sometime next week. If anyone can provide any kind of suggestions, it would help me out a lot.

Here is a list of my components:
Windows XP Profesional sp2
AMD Athlon 64 3400
SOLTEK SL-K8AN2E-GR Socket 754 NVIDIA nForce3 250Gb ATX AMD
ARCTIC COOLING 90mm Cooling Fan/Heatsink
VGA|PNY 6600GT 128M R
FAN COOLINGFAN MASSCOOL (I have 2 of these)
Maxtor 120 Gig Hard Drive
Mad Dog Dvd Player Driver
Mad Dog CD Burner Drive
Crucial 512 pc27600 ram
? 256 pc3200 ram

If you need any more information, please let me know.

 

[SOcRatEs]

Hello! Welcome to TechSpot!

This is the latest Unified driver for nForce3 chiptset
Try this, if doesn't work, You may want to start a new thread in this forum to get better responses.
G'Luck

 

[gmcerlan]

Thanks for the link. I will try it and see what happens. Thanks again for the suggestion.

 

[azz3879]

What ended up happening???

gmcerlan, I am having the same exact, to a tee, dead on, problem that you described... I'm wondering what you did to solve the problem.

Thanks!

Justin Kase Conder
azz3879@hotmail.com

 

[SOcRatEs]

Hello! Welcome to TechSpot!

Well,
I think we never heard back from these two posters.
So lets focus on your troubles...
What kind of system do you have?

You may want to start a new thread in this forum "Audio and Video" to get better and more responses.

I'll look for the new thread.
G'Luck

 

[gmcerlan]

I replaced both my RAM and hard drive and have not had a problem since. As you can see from my old specs, I had two different kinds of RAM. Someone advised me that I should run a test on the Memory. Lo and behold, one of the memory was bad. So I bought a new 1 gig PC3200 single stick from Crucial. I was also told that if I buy two separate 512 sticks, make sure they are the same brand.

I do not know if replacing the hard drive helped solve the problem, but like I said, I have not had a problem since. Let me know if that works for you. Good Luck.

 

[azz3879]

Awesome!

Awesome! Thank you so much for getting back to me. Tell me how did you "test" the memory in your system?

I'm running two hard drives on my computer, each has its own version of Windows XP and I run into the same problem on my "test" XP hard drive which I clean install XP on frequently, so I have a feeling that it just may be the memory... although its weird that it wouldn't affect any other functions of my computer...

Justin Kase Conder

 

[SOcRatEs]

Awesome! Thank you so much for getting back to me. Tell me how did you "test" the memory in your system?

I'm running two hard drives on my computer, each has its own version of Windows XP and I run into the same problem on my "test" XP hard drive which I clean install XP on frequently, so I have a feeling that it just may be the memory... although its weird that it wouldn't affect any other functions of my computer...

Justin Kase Conder

Prime95 is very reliable for testing cpu/ram. It's called "the torture test".
Run it at least 6 hours.
GLuck
let us know how things work out for you....

 

[PC_Nerd]

Use Windows Media player 10, or even better, ITunes....

 

[gmcerlan]

The thing about Prime95 is that it will not tell you specifically what is wrong with your computer. It is a great test to see if your system is stable or not. So basically, if Prime95 detects something wrong, it will stop all tests and give you a generic error message. If it works for more thant 8 hours, then your sytems is running stable.

To test your memory...use memtest

http://www.memtest86.com/

Hope that helps.