Vista WMP11 & Media Centre - New fault playing WMA/WMV/MP3/AVI files

[Colin]

For the last two or three days, WMP11 & Media Centre in Vista have developed
a problem when attempting to play the above file types.

The symptoms are:

Slow video (frame by frame)
No sound
MP3 files display slow progress and no sound (a bit of a problem for an MP3
file!)

No error messages display: the files load & 'play'.

All of these file types work fine in Realplayer, Winamp etc. but I would
like a functional WMP as I prefer it.

I have tried a rollback to last weekend when I knew these were working, but
Vista is unable to complete the rollback. It has now lost all restore
points.
I have tried uninstalling WMP11 via Control Panel, but this action does not
work. This would appear to be a major problem in itself (unless it cannot be
installed in Vista).
(I suspect that Registry Mechanic may have damaged WMP11 uninstall but am
not sure)

Windows Media Player still works correctly with DVDs, Streaming Video & MPEG
video.
I have tried changing performance settings etc. to no avail.

I cannot identify what could have caused this change in behaviour (all these
files used to work fine in WMP11). I see that others are having the same
problems, but there appears to be no common consensus on what has happened.
Any Windows Updates in the past few days that could have broken WMP11?

Full Virus Scan & Defender Scan bring up nothing of concern.

Thanks for any help you can provide,

Colin

 

[Colin]

Is this anything to do with MFPMP.EXE?

I have worked out that MFPMP.EXE appears in Task Manager with these file
types but not others. And it's eating up a shedload of resources which
probably explains the slow behaviour.

Why do you need MFPMP DRM to play an MP3???!

And more importantly, is there any way I can shut this off without affecting
my ability to play protected files?

Note that I have 2GB of memory, and ithis application is still eating about
60% of my resources by itself......

Colin

 

[John Barnes]

If you suspect Registry Mechanic, doesn't it have a way of restoring any
registry entries it deletes or changes, most do. Restore the registry items
it deleted or changed since the problem developed, like you tried to with
System Restore

 

[Joe Guidera]

Ouch. Wouldn't even know how to begin to address. Between Registry
Mechanic and the third party applications that you indicated are installed
I'm guessing you know have a messed up registry (registry mechanic) and a
number of third party codecs installed (at least one of which is likely
causing your appcrash). You might try un-installing the third party media
apps (e.g. realplayer, winamp, etc) and hopefully they remove their codecs
with them.

Joe

 

[Colin]

Thanks John,

Had a look at the registry items deleted by Registry Mechanic last Wednesday
(the last time I ran it) and the only ones related to Media Player were
associated with some temporary internet files which had been deleted.

So I'm back to MFPMP.EXE which would seem to be prime suspect, although I
don't know why it has suddenly started hogging resources.

Colin

 

[Colin]

Can't believe it - right after writing this I click on the 'performance &
maintenance' newsgroup and find the answer right there.

It's my Creative Soundblaster driver (which, as is well known, Creative
haven't properly prepped for Vista). The posting said to disable the audio
enhancement option, which I did. Now everything is back to normal!

Think I will go and have a moan (along with the hundreds of others) on the
Creative Forum.......

Colin