Media files won't play anymore on U.S. Soldier's laptop...
 

Any idea what's wrong with my bro-in-law's laptop? He recently (finally) just got an internet connection at his base in Iraq, and a lot of his software updated. Now WMP and iTunes won't play anymore, and this REALLY needs to be fixed. His computer is all he has there.

Here is the error he gets in WMP:

"Windows Media Player cannot access the file. The file might be in use, you might not have access to the computer where the file is stored, or your proxy settings might not be correct."

No other program is using any of the files, he's not doing anything differently from when it did work. iTunes just doesn't do anything. You tell it to play a file, and it ignores you.

What can be done? Obviously I don't have access to his laptop, but I can send him stuff to run and tell him what to do. Please help ASAP.

um uninstall wmp...and get wmp11 same with itunes see if that works....

Yeah, I told him to try that, and I also told him to download Wimamp as a test. There's only one problem with that. He's currently getting 56K-like speeds with the connection they set up at his base. Supposedly they're gonna boost it up soon though.

Let's leave that solution for later. Anything else we can try for now, like checking settings and stuff? Thanks man.

They don't play well together, probably a conflict with WMP and I-tunes trying to use the same IRQ etc.

Here are a few diff solutions.

Update sound Drivers and Direct X, Go here for more; http://www.microsoft.com/windows/win...e/archive.mspx

Open quicktime > edit > preferences > quick time preferences > audio tab > Select audio playback and recording devices. it may say error detected. just hit OK and close, don't have to change anything.

DOPISP makes I Tunes work with WMP, so you wont need I-tunes anymore.
Download here;http://www.mgtek.com/dopisp/

:toast:

I'll forward all that to him as soon I talk to him tonight. Thanks.

I just want to point something out though. WMP and iTunes have been working together fine since he bought the laptop.

He may need to update his codecs... My media center stopped working after a update from windows a week ago... but I didn't have any codecs in my system.. I added CCCP and it now works great!

File in use probably is caused by access rights. Check if he can copy the files elsewhere (desktop for a test for example) if he can't that's the issue.

I'll tell him to try that, thanks.

I'll tell him to try that, but I'm wondering why that would become an issue all of a sudden. If that is the issue I'm going to need to know how to fix it. I'll update you all tonight hopefully.

This forum is made up of problems that were issues all of a sudden for many different reasons.

Ask him to download and use VLC Media Player from http://www.videolan.org/

VLC is an all-integrated media player with support for many standard formats, what sets this apart is that it doesn't depend on any external codecs or output plugins, if it has issues with the DirectSound, it can still use wave-mapper.