WMP11 no longer streams .asx and .asf files

[Greg]

I get an error saying it's unable to play the files, and the detailed message
suggests they are corrupted. They are not corrupted, I changed IE to use
Winamp and they play just fine from the same sites. Also if I save the files
to my hard drive, they iopen fine in WMP11. It only fusses when I try to
stream them.

The only thing that changed recently is I tried and then removed (via
restore) IE8 as it was mangling the rendering of many pages.

Yes I have a workaround, but as I experienced with XP and WMP9/10, it starts
with one thing not working and gets progressively worse.

As MS has decided to not allow me to uninstall and reinstall WMP11 under
Vista, I have to do some repair "as is".

 

[Greg]

Unfortunately, that option is already checked as are all the protocols.

Greg

 

[Greg]

More info: The same streams will play directly in Google Chrome using WMP
11. Obviosuly the problem is not with WMP but with IE so perhaps my
suspicion about IE8 corrupting something is correct?

 

[zachd [MSFT]]

This sounds like your file associations are wonky.

What's a sample URL that fails?
What third party media players are installed?

If you reset the file associations under Vista's Default Programs:Set
Program Access and Defaults control panel, does that fix this up?

 

[Greg]

The file associations are correct. If I try to stream something at
cdconnection.com, WMP 11 starts and says it is unable to play the file. If I
save the link as a file and open it with WMP 11 it works fine. If I access
the same site with Google Chrome, it plays in WMP 11. I looked at the
contents of the .asx file and it is syntactically correct. If I enter the
URL into WMP 11 it also plays fine.

I also tried resetting the default program setting and that had no effect on
the problem.

I have the latest Winamp Pro and, for now, have associated .asx and .asf
files with it so I can stream from IE 7.

BTW, I tried the repair you suggesed to someone else, I think it was scf
/scannow and afterwards my system would boot to the desktop and the CPU was
so tied up doing something I couldn't do anything at all. From the 21 mb log
file, it looks like it replaced two damaged files neither of which appears to
be related to WMP. Repeated reboots didn't fix the problem so I booted to
safe mode and rolled back to the previous day.

Greg

 

[zachd [MSFT]]

What's a sample URL that fails?

WinAMP and any other player that I'm aware of download the media file
differently than the player does. You cannot emulate what the player does
in any other fashion. You cannot emulate the file association methodology
used precisely here in any other way. It is indeed possible to "speed bump"
the association via incorrect third party associations so that an internal
file association check fails but the file association then correctly works
on a secondary path which may or may not result in a minor aberration which
can affect playback. But if you went through SPAD you ~should~ have
corrected that path if it was broken.

 

[Greg]

As I already stated above, www.cdconnection.com. I cannot stream any of the
sample audio files.

Other than your querty about url, the rest of your answer/comment is
complete gibberish and I'm not impressed. If you are here to help (which I
appreciate) then help, don't write something that sounds like a politician on
the Sunday morning talk shows.

Greg

 

[zachd [MSFT]]

Right, but if you told me *exactly* what you were trying to play, that would
help me *exactly* try what you're trying, this ensuring better accuracy of
my testing. =)

If you right-click Save As one of those ASX's to your hard drive and open up
that ASX in the player directly, does it work then?

I'm not attempting to be on TV, just attempting to point out important
technical considerations which you had *potentially* glossed over with this
comment: "The file associations are correct". It is nearly impossible for
anyone to verify that without inspecting the registry directly (even if it
"seems" right, other things can be going on) as the file association methods
used can be intricate. I'm assuming that's ~not~ the problem going on here,
but that's hard to definitively say.

I am here to help and am unfortunately ill-suited to do so as I work writing
code for areas of my interest and thus suck at explaining to the lay more
casual observer that appearances can be deceiving. I apologize. =\

 

[Greg]

The reason I know the file associations are correct is if I try to stream the
audio file, it does start WMP 11 with an error message saying it's unable to
play the file. If the association wasn't correct I assume WMP would not be
launched a all. Yes, if I save the .asx file to disk and then open it with
WMP 11, it does play.

Try *any* audio link on cdconnection.com, choose your favorite music and
then save the target file if you want to examine the .asx file. No matter
what file I try to stream, the results are the same.

Here's the contents of one I have saved to disk:

<ASX Version="3.0"><ENTRY><REF
HREF="mms://sg5.allmusic.com/027wma_28/s131/s13158/s1315886/s131588602hb6je.wma"/></ENTRY></ASX>

I am also a software developer who has to provide client support at times.
I know the difficulties of seeing exactly what the client is seeing and
appreciate them. I also know giving my clients excess technical information
on what's going on is probably making their eyes glaze over. I still
can't make much sense of your previous post. My comments were meant to be
tongue-in-cheek, I do appreciate your help.

Greg

 

[zachd [MSFT]]

The reason I know the file associations are correct is if I try to stream
the
audio file, it does start WMP 11 with an error message saying it's unable
to
play the file. If the association wasn't correct I assume WMP would not
be
launched a all.

Nope: it can just get launched differently. There's multiple layers of
associations, if one fails you simply step down a layer. When you're
interacting with a web server, sometimes they can try to do little
server-side tricks that will interfere with that failover.

Yes, if I save the .asx file to disk and then open it with
WMP 11, it does play.

OK, and so for you when you click "Web Help" on that Error dialog, what
*URL* does it take you to?

Does it happen with non-CDConnection web sites? Does a sample WMV such as
one of http://zachd.com/mvc2/fulllist.html?360 work for you? Does a sample
ASF such as one of http://zachd.com/mvc2/fulllist.html?asf work for you? (I
realize that content is all dumb, but -- I know the URL off the top of my
head, so that's a quick test URL.)

-Z

 

[Greg]

Let me try again: If I go to internet options/programs, then click Set
Programs under internet program,s it brings up a dialog. I click associate a
file type or... and scroll down to .asx. Right now it';s set to winamp but
if I set it back to WMP, the fle type doesn't stream. Are you saying this is
NOT the place to set the file associations? And yes, it's not just
cdconnection, and, in any case, cd connection was working up until recently.

I've also used the set your default program option on the same dialog.

None of your files stream, the only choices I get are open, save, cancel.
As far as I can tell, the only difference between open and save is where it
places the file, but regardless it is downloaded before playing.

Some change I have made since pursuing this problem now causes the streams
on cdconnection to fail without an error message. I click, it appears to do
a quick download but nothing comes up so I can no longer tell you where it
goes when I click Web Help. I can tell you it suggested codec, compression
or corrupted file.

Wouldn't it be nice if MS allowed me to unistall WMP 11 so I could reinstall
it thereby reestablishing the associations and/or repairing whatever the
problem is?

Greg

 

[zachd [MSFT]]

Let me try again: If I go to internet options/programs, then click Set
Programs under internet program,s it brings up a dialog. I click
associate a
file type or... and scroll down to .asx. Right now it';s set to winamp
but
if I set it back to WMP, the fle type doesn't stream. Are you saying this
is
NOT the place to set the file associations? And yes, it's not just
cdconnection, and, in any case, cd connection was working up until
recently.

I've also used the set your default program option on the same dialog.

'Set your default programs' does per-user file associations, which is why I
explicitly referenced "Set Program Access and Defaults", which also allows
the player a minor chance to correct damage other utilities/players can do
to its associations. They're related but different. =)

None of your files stream, the only choices I get are open, save, cancel.
As far as I can tell, the only difference between open and save is where
it
places the file, but regardless it is downloaded before playing.

Interesting: is that with WMP or WinAMP set as default? This is obviously
incorrect behavior and a likely sign that the file association is indeed set
wrong. I had kind of been moving away from that as a suspected cause, but
your system behaving this way does indicate that it is currently set
incorrectly.

Some change I have made since pursuing this problem now causes the streams
on cdconnection to fail without an error message. I click, it appears to
do
a quick download but nothing comes up so I can no longer tell you where it
goes when I click Web Help. I can tell you it suggested codec,
compression
or corrupted file.

Wouldn't it be nice if MS allowed me to unistall WMP 11 so I could
reinstall
it thereby reestablishing the associations and/or repairing whatever the
problem is?

Yes, it's too bad that MS doesn't offer this functionality that would *not*
have reestablished the associations and/or likely repaired whatever the
problem is. ;-)

The basic BOMs (install designs) are on your system and can be inspected.
You'll note that the player install design is to be friendly to other
players that take associations, which thus means that associations are not
reestablished.* It also operates on a global (per-machine) level only,
really, so if you are experiencing user-level corruption (verifiable via
trying this on a second account on the system), it would be unlikely to
repair the problem in question. Does this work for a new user account on
your system? (Note that system-wide association corruption/mis-setting
would also affect a second user, so this isn't definitive, just potentially
interesting.)

* These registrations are done in config sections designed not to overwrite
settings done by other players. The (system) component installer has no
mechanism for determining if the association chain is valid, and since that
could change as components (shell, IE) get updated, there would be no
persistent way to determine that. Windows Media Player's SPAD
implementation is your only chance to give the player the reins to reset
things back to "normal" if they were corrupt. SYDP operates via the shell
parsing the application's Capabilities information, which does not allow the
player to reset any system-wide corruption. Capabilities points to
something along the lines of WMP11.AssocFile.ASF - if Player XYZ decides to
corrupt WMP11.AssocFile.ASF, SYDP doesn't and can't correct for that (it
doesn't know). SPAD *can* correct for that (with the additional notation
that it's always possible to do righteously horrible things to file
associations, so it's always best to use your own named hive. You would
think that with a name like "WMP11.something" other apps would not stomp on
those subkeys, but you'd be surprised. The WMP code will try to repair
damage done to the "WMP11.something" hives if I recall correctly, but it
isn't always possible.)



Let's get back to core interesting questions as opposed to tangenting over
to underlying technology which I find fascinating but you likely find a
waste of your time:
* Did you try SPAD?
* Does it work for a second account?
* What are the values and subkeys under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.asx and under
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\WMP11.AssocFile.ASX ?

-Zach

 

[Greg]

I had previously checked the Set Program Access and Defaults and it was set
to use WMP as my player. On a hunch, I chose the custom radio button, and
forced in WMP again. Voila! It now streams .asx files. So apparently,
seeing isn't necessarily believing.

Thank you very much!

Greg