302 Found fails for mms://...

Werner Henze · Mar 3, 2005

Hi!

I got the following results for IE 6 on Windows 2000 Pro German with all
available Windows Updates installed.

On the top of the page
http://www.live-radio.net/SearchRes...la&OFee=Any&OSta=Li&Sta=&OPag=10&OCit=Li&Cit=
there is a link to the internet radio 91.9 FM Center. Life Feed
links to http://www.live-radio.net/redirfeed.php3?Id=790822. The
HTTP request is done as follows:
---------------------------------------
GET http://www.live-radio.net/redirfeed.php3?Id=790822 HTTP/1.1
Accept: */*
Referer:
http://www.live-radio.net/SearchRes...la&OFee=Any&OSta=Li&Sta=&OPag=10&OCit=Li&Cit=
Accept-Language: de
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; .NET CLR
1.1.4322)
Host: www.live-radio.net
Proxy-Connection: Keep-Alive
---------------------------------------
HTTP/1.0 302 Found
Connection: close
Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2005 19:08:40 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.29 (Unix) mod_auth_passthrough/1.8 mod_log_bytes/1.2
mod_bwlimited/1.4 PHP/4.3.3 FrontPage/5.0.2.2634 mod_ssl/2.8.16
OpenSSL/0.9.7a
X-Powered-By: PHP/4.3.3
Location: mms://ds19.dhsnow.com/919fm
Content-Type: text/html
---------------------------------------
Unfortunately the Internet Explorer only shows the error page "Error: Server
or DNS cannot be found". If I directly enter mms://ds19.dhsnow.com/919fm
into
the address page of the IE 6, then Windows Media Player is started correctly
and plays the stream.
The link for Aciragua Stereo 95.5 succeeds, the request ist as follows:
---------------------------------------
GET http://www.live-radio.net/redirfeed.php3?Id=790822 HTTP/1.1
Accept: */*
Referer:
http://www.live-radio.net/SearchRes...la&OFee=Any&OSta=Li&Sta=&OPag=10&OCit=Li&Cit=
Accept-Language: de
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; .NET CLR
1.1.4322)
Host: www.live-radio.net
Proxy-Connection: Keep-Alive
---------------------------------------
HTTP/1.0 302 Found
Connection: close
Date: Tue, 01 Mar 2005 19:08:42 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.29 (Unix) mod_auth_passthrough/1.8 mod_log_bytes/1.2
mod_bwlimited/1.4 PHP/4.3.3 FrontPage/5.0.2.2634 mod_ssl/2.8.16
OpenSSL/0.9.7a
X-Powered-By: PHP/4.3.3
Location: mms://ds19.dhsnow.com/919fm
Content-Type: text/html
---------------------------------------

Firefox does not have this problem and can handle both requests correctly.

My guess: The IE 6 has problems with the change from http: to mms:. But why?
And where can I report that bug to Microsoft without having to pay for the
support?

Kind regards,
Werner...

Robert Aldwinckle · Mar 4, 2005

....

My guess: The IE 6 has problems with the change from http: to mms:. But why?

Werner,

mms is one of a few protocols which isn't listed in Folders File Types
(e.g. under Extensions: (NONE).

FWIW I used the following cmd pipeline to compare with what
Folders File Types shows:

ftype | find /i "wmp"

Switching to RegEdit and searching in HKCR for the missing ones
notice that some of them are prefixed by Url: in their (Default) value
but don't have Editflags values. In contrast most of the other Url:
do have an Editflags value with at least the 0x02 bit set.

There is abundant evidence that IE is very dependent on information
entered through that GUI so my guess would be that making an entry
for that protocol visible or at least giving it an Editflags value to inspect
could be a useful thing to try.

FYI (assuming I have found the correct declarations) MSDN shows that
the 0x02 bit in Editflags means this:

<quote>
FTA_Show (0x00000002)

Shows file classes, such as folders, that aren't associated with a file name extension.
</quote>

As an approach to diagnosing why IE doesn't open Media Player
I would use RegMon filtering on MMS. Since you know that
Firefox behaves differently I think it would be interesting and
useful to compare such traces from both browsers.
E.g. if you found that IE attempts to look at Editflags but
Firefox doesn't you could have reasonable evidence to support
the idea that creating a value for it might change your symptom.

Good luck

Robert Aldwinckle
---

Werner Henze · Mar 5, 2005

Hi!

Setting EditFlags to Binary "02 00 00 00" did not help.

RegMon and FileMon have not been helpful. I did not see any
registry access for an mms key - even on startup of IE.

Ciao,
Werner...

Robert Aldwinckle · Mar 5, 2005

Werner Henze said:
Hi!

Setting EditFlags to Binary "02 00 00 00" did not help.

Wrong byte. The whole word (as many of the others already do)
would look like 00 00 00 02

RegMon and FileMon have not been helpful. I did not see any
registry access for an mms key - even on startup of IE.

Sorry. That was just a guess. I haven't tried your sample links yet
either.

---

Werner Henze · Mar 6, 2005

Hi!

I looked at HKCR\callto\EditFlags, it is a binary "02 00 00 00".
I believe binary "02 00 00 00" is the same as dword 00000002.
A short test with dword 00000002 did not work.

I still believe, this is a bug in IE. But I am not willing to
call MS support and pay for sending in that bug.

Ciao,
Werner...

Robert Aldwinckle · Mar 6, 2005

Werner Henze said:
Hi!

Setting EditFlags to Binary "02 00 00 00" did not help.

RegMon and FileMon have not been helpful. I did not see any
registry access for an mms key - even on startup of IE.

I finally tried this. I didn't need create an EditFlags value.
I didn't have any trouble at all. WMP launched and started playing.

FWIW here is the first entry from RegMon (filtering on MMS)

13:09:35 iexplore.exe:2216 OpenKey HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet
Explorer\Extensions\{438AFBA1-B0CB-11D2-9214-00104B3BCE5F}\Software\Policies\Microsoft\WindowsMediaPlayer\Protocols\MMS NOTFOUND

There were no entries in FileMon using the same filter.
It looks as if WMP would have been a better choice.

BTW which version of WMP do you have?

Have you considered posting in a newsgroup which specializes
in that product? People there may be more familiar with your symptom.

HTH

Robert
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