Subj : Free WMP alternative? To : ALL From : MIKE POWELL Date : Mon Jun 06 2005 01:48 pm Is there a freeware alternative to Windows Media Player that will handle all of the media formats that WMP will play (audio and video)? A friend of mine is running Win98SE on an old machine that she mostly uses for e-mail and light surfing. When someone sends a Windows Media format file to her via attachment, she is unable to view it from Hotmail. It acts like it is working, and then presents an error. However, while I was looking at it, I was able to forward it to my address (non-Hotmail), and we were then able to view it. I am wondering that, since Hotmail is a MS product, was it possible that it, or WMP, were displaying these errors in an attempt to try to get people to upgrade to WinXP and/or WMP 10. On a partially-related note, I did run a Windows Update, which downloaded some critical updates to Windows, IE, and WMP. After doing so, the sound on the machine quit working. When a sounds starts to play, it "hangs" and either will not allow other sounds to play from that point on, or keeps playing until another sound "pushes" it out, and starts hanging on its own. Annoying to say the least. I attempted to uninstall the WMP update, but it was not listed as uninstallable. Since the sound was working fine before, I am leaning more towards it being a software problem than a hardware problem (although I have seen hardware problems cause this scenario before). Any ideas on that one? Mike --- þ SLMR 2.1a þ A nudist wedding makes the best man easy to identify. --- þ BgNet 1.0á12 ÷ Kentucky's Capitol City Online * 502/875-8938 * USR v34 .