Media Player 11 buffering issues

[radelster]

Vista Home, MP 11. Listening to internet radio, and constantly get the
BUFFERING message. Sometimes returns in a couple seconds, sometimes a couple
minutes, sometimes up to 20 minutes.

Broadband connection, and I have an XP machine on my network, which I can
listen to the same stations for hours with no problems.

Apprecaite any assistance. I have already tried my ISP, and my PC
manufacturer.

 

[Mark L. Ferguson]

WMP FAQ A trouble-shooting guide for Windows Media Player problems.:
http://zachd.com/pss/pss.html

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Mark L. Ferguson

..

 

[radelster]

Thank you for the response Mark, however it only caused more issues.

Tried downloading the cumulative update for WMP. Had issues connecting to
Microsoft to 'validate' my software. After two times I was finally able to
get a secret code. Ran the first update and it states - The Update Does Not
Apply to Your system. Found another one strictly for WMP, had to
re-validate, download install and get same error.

The 'latest version' mentioned in the FAQ is 6000.6324, but I have 6000.6344.

Tried running the Firefox plug-in fix and see if that does anything. BUt I
have to close all my windows (including this one). I checked the rest of the
FAQ's, and I don't see where any of that applies to my situation. I will
rate the response after trying the plug-in, but at this point... gotta say -
not helpful.

 

[radelster]

nice to know that you get what you pay for in these forums - NOTHING.

 

[zachd [MSFT]]

I was wondering whether that was a helpful pointer. I don't really recall
having a "buffering.." section. =\

What's the stream to? (Read: what's the URL?) What's the stream bitrate?

Does it work correctly for a friend?
What type of broadband connection via what provider?

If it's not a mainstream Internet radio site, it may not have the bandwidth
to support you well. A lot of smaller sites don't really plan for the
traffic they end up getting.

 

[radelster]

Zachd,

The site can be found at KXCD.Com. I also use crossrhythms.co.uk and
others. I do not know about the bitrates and such.
All I know is - it works fine on my XP PC, but does nothing but buffering on
my Vista PC.

As stated in my first post. I contacted the ISP who ran several tests &
Pings, and everything was good.

Contacted my PC manufacturer who referred me to Microsoft to get help for
the Vista/Media Player issue.

Microsoft is useless which is why I've dumped my Office products in favor of
Open Office.

 

[zachd [MSFT]]

I like http://xkcd.com more, but that's not really too musical.

I tried KXCD.com . It worked fine for me on both XPSP2 and Vista SP1
(32bit) and Vista SP1 (64bit). I don't have a non-SP1 system right now.
Anybody else could also try and verify that site on a non-SP1 system if
people think that might be relevant.

The stream was 85kbps.

Click ALT+V. Then press the "Statistics" button there. What does it say
about your connection?

I'm suspecting there's something wrong in your networking connectivity.
I've got verification so far that this works fine on three different
systems...

What ISP are you using? What's your connection rate? You can check that in
your Statistics button, for example. Since this seems to be isolated to
your system/your networking, the question becomes: what's unique about this
bad system of yours? Why are you suffering when other Windows or Vista
boxes aren't?

 

[radelster]

Could not connect to KXCD, so did crossthythms.co.uk.
1st problem, damn media player comes up within Firefox tab, rather than the
external player. Don't know how to get rid of that.

stream coming at 128K
Network internet connection 1400K
quality (15s average) 100

ISP Is Cox Communications. I am hard-wired to router/modem.

as for the 'suffering, it seems there are quite a few folks having issues
with buffering, just mainly with video, not audio.

 

[zachd [MSFT]]

Waaaaaait. You couldn't connect to KXCD at all? That's not right at all.
Do you mean you couldn't connect to the stream, or the site? The site works
fine. The stream works fine.

Are these other people also on Cox... ? What exact type/brand of router?
I'm assuming cable modem?

You could try going through IE here. I respect people's interesting in
Firefox, I just personally prefer IE more. For the purposes of testing,
that would probably put us on the same page.

Yes, this would be more typically a problem with higher-bitrate streams such
as video . It should be very atypical for low-bitrate audio streams. This
puts you in your own class which isn't extremely relevant to anyone
suffering from video-stream buffering issues.

I think your connectivity is wonky. Watch the statistics's "Advanced" tab
for a while as you go into buffering mode - do things check out there?