Windows Media Player broken

[plutnicki]

I did an archive and install from 10.3 to 10.4 yesterday and am just starting to run through all my applications. Windows Media Player is the first I've found that is just broken. It won't even start up to run...

AND, so I figure maybe just download a fresh copy, only when I download it comes down in a .sitx file which 10.4 apparently has no idea what to do with it. I can't open it, it asks what application to use to open it (no clue?).

Help?

 

[eva01]

that is for stuffit. Download that program then you can open up the installer

 

[plutnicki]

Yup

Figured out the stuffit expander and downloaded a new version. Interesting that I never had to do that before, expander doesn't come with OS 10.4?

However, even installing a new version of windows media player didn't help, still fails to start to run. Bummer.

Submitted a bug report to apple like it asked.

 

[flyfish29]

Has WMP EVER been fixed?

 

[G5Unit]

I know it really sucks.......bad.

 

[Mr_Ed]

I know it really sucks.......bad.

Yeah, it sure does. Unfortunately there's a lot of web content out there that requires it. Only reason I cared about it crashing after the Tiger install.

Re-installing WMP 9 did solve my problem though. I haven't had a single WMP crash since then.

 

[mkrishnan]

It sounds like maybe the re-install isn't writing over some bad plists or other library content. FWIW WMP9 works on Tiger for me also, although I haven't been able to get it to run content in the browser window in Safari yet. It does it in FF, but not Safari....

 

[neocell]

When I first upgraded to 10.4 on my G4 1GHz iMac and 12" PB 1.33 WMP9 worked fine. Now with 10.4.1 it works on my PB but not my iMac, just crashes whenever I start it up

 

[Mr_Ed]

When I first upgraded to 10.4 on my G4 1GHz iMac and 12" PB 1.33 WMP9 worked fine. Now with 10.4.1 it works on my PB but not my iMac, just crashes whenever I start it up

That sounds like the symptom I experienced. It worked for a while after a reboot, then it would crash. Once it crashed, it would continue to crash on startup until I rebooted. Reinstalling WMP 9 fixed the problem for me.

It sounds like maybe the re-install isn't writing over some bad plists or other library content. FWIW WMP9 works on Tiger for me also, although I haven't been able to get it to run content in the browser window in Safari yet. It does it in FF, but not Safari....

Did you do some Tiger installation other than "Upgrade"? If so, you may have lost the plugins in the "/Library/Internnet Plug-Ins" directory. The WMP 9 reinstall didn't quite do the trick for me on the Safari support. I happened to have a copy of my old "/Library" from another install. After I copied the missing plug-ins over, it worked fine.

 

[plutnicki]

Fixed

After reviewing the Apple help boards, everything is working OK now. I removed the preferences files from the /Library/Preferences directory and WMP seems to be working just fine and dandy now. There were 3 files I moved. one was a com.microsoft.mediaplayer (or something like that). Another was called Windows Media Preferences (or something like that).

If you need the exact file names, just post so and I'll get them when I get home.

Once I moved those two files out of the Preferences directory, the media player starts up and runs just fine it seems...

 

[mkrishnan]

Did you do some Tiger installation other than "Upgrade"? If so, you may have lost the plugins in the "/Library/Internnet Plug-Ins" directory. The WMP 9 reinstall didn't quite do the trick for me on the Safari support. I happened to have a copy of my old "/Library" from another install. After I copied the missing plug-ins over, it worked fine.

Hmmm...I did an archive and install, without importing users / preferences. So I essentially installed WMP on top of a clean installation. The strange thing is that the plugin files are there -- Firefox uses them! But Safari ignores them and decides that the content can only be played in the external application (it has a pop-up window to this effect, verifying that I want to launch WMP9). It then launches and plays fine, but it isn't quite satisfactory for some uses, such as iRecordMusic, which uses WebKit to record streaming broadcasts. It works fine for quicktime and real streams, but can't do WMP because the WMP will not embed....

If I have the /Library/Internet Plug-Ins" directory, what files am I supposed to get? The ones I got were

- DRM Plugin.bundle
- Windows Media Plugin -- this is a directory with a contents folder and a contents/macos folder, like a bundle or app, but it has no extension. Could this be the problem?

Thanks!

 

[Makosuke]

Once I moved those two files out of the Preferences directory, the media player starts up and runs just fine it seems...

Yep, I had this exact problem after installing Tiger (on two users, in fact), and the solution was the same--just get rid of the preference files, and it'll start working again.

Interestingly, Apple's fancy new "clean retry" system fails to help this problem, because it only starts WMP with a clean copy of the plist file, while both the plist and the other preference file need to be removed to get it working again. Way to go on the unnecessarily complicated prefs scheme, MS.

 

[MoparShaha]

I never had the crash problem, but I can't seem to stream content properly. It just says "Connecting" for a really long time. After a few minutes it works, but my XP box on the same connection has no problems at all.

 

[neocell]

After downloading the WMP sitx file (took forever on the damn windows server) and then going back to 10.3 to get stuffit to work, then back to 10.4.1 to install WMP 9, it still crashes. I used archive and install when upgrading to 10.4, and I don't have any files in my Internet Plug Ins folder, for either my PowerBook or iMac (though as I said before WMP 9 works on my PB using 10.4.1) Any suggestions?

 

[Mr_Ed]

If I have the /Library/Internet Plug-Ins" directory, what files am I supposed to get? The ones I got were

- DRM Plugin.bundle
- Windows Media Plugin -- this is a directory with a contents folder and a contents/macos folder, like a bundle or app, but it has no extension. Could this be the problem?

Those are the ones I was missing from my installation of Tiger, but you seem to have them . . .

Both the DRM Plugin.bundle and the Windows media Plugin are 'packages' which means they are technically folders, but they should not be listed as 'folders' in the Finder window. A snapshot of my 'Internet Plug-ins' directory is attached:

 

[mkrishnan]

Both the DRM Plugin.bundle and the Windows media Plugin are 'packages' which means they are technically folders, but they should not be listed as 'folders' in the Finder window. A snapshot of my 'Internet Plug-ins' directory is attached:

Thanks for the screenshot, Mr. Ed. Mine looks the same! So you can definitely play streamed WMP content *inside* the browser? I wonder why I can't? *grumbles*

 

[Mr_Ed]

Thanks for the screenshot, Mr. Ed. Mine looks the same! So you can definitely play streamed WMP content *inside* the browser? I wonder why I can't? *grumbles*

Yeah. Example: this page has a WMV video embedded in it (motorcycle stunts) and it plays inside the web page for me. Of course, if I launch the same video as a direct link: http://content.leenks.com/media/motor.madness.wmv, it gets played outside Safari. Not all web pages actually "embed" the media. I've hit plenty of sites that just link to the media without embedding it. If both of the above links play outside Safari, I can only guess there is something wrong with your plugin. Only other thing I can suggest is check your installed plugins in Safari (Help menu-->Installed Plugins) and see if Windows Media Plugin is listed. I attached a shot of that portion of my Safari plugins listing. If it does not show up there, Safari does not know it is there, or there some problem (permissions? corruption?) that keeps Safari from using it.

[Edit: Sorry, the second link may not work when clicked from MacForums. May have to copy-paste it into Safari.]

 

[mkrishnan]

Interesting. That site did embed for me. Guess I had just been going to a lot of sites that didn't have embedding properly written?

Thanks again for the help, Mr. Ed! You're a horse of a different color!

 

[sorryiwasdreami]

Does anyone know where to obtain the windows media plug in? Somehow I don't have it in my internet plug-ins folder either, however, I do have Windows Media Player installed and working properly (as a stand alone app).

Any help would be appreciated; emailing the plug-in would work even.

 

[JeffTL]

WMP works better on Panther than it does on XP for me.