'interesting' Windows sound problems
 

Starting last thursday, halfway through an episode of GitS (XviD AC3 encoded) Windows Media Player decided to give up on sound, entirely. WMP will now complain about incompatible file/codec on every sound file, Winamp works fine, Windows itself can still play .wav files, Intervideo WinDVD and the standard DivX player both run movies fine (as in, with sound). In addition, certain games (Morrowind being the only I've tested so far) also seem incapable of playing .mp3 files (Morrowind pops up an error message about not being able to play music.mp3, then shuts down).

Seeing as how it gave up halfway through a movie file, after no changes for over 2 months, I have since used several virus scanners (Norton, AVG and PCCillin's webscanner, all up to date ofcourse) and spyware scanners (Spybot, Adaware and PCCillin's webscanner). Reinstalling WMP and reinstalling the various codecs it seems to have lost haven't produced any results.

The machine on which this is happening is a Fujitsi Siemens Amilo, although it can't be hardware related since Winamp and other programs still produce sound normally. I'd rather like to fix this problem without formatting, because it'll take bloody ages to get it all setup the way it's supposed be then.

Any ideas?

Re: 'interesting' Windows sound problems
 

Not everyday you ask for help (more like you giving help :| )

Try rolling back/earlier updates for your sound card (I doubt it'll work though).

Worse comes to worse, you'll have to use the recovery console - Windows always buggers up it's a buggy OS.

Re: 'interesting' Windows sound problems
 

well, like I said, nothing had changed for quite a while, and seeing as how this occured while the laptop was not connected to the internet (I was watching a video in the car), combined with the fact that Winamp, America's Army, X-Com 3 and a few other programs all produce sound as they should, leads me to believe that it can't really be a driver problem.

As for recovery, can't, no floppy drive in this machine. My only option would be to format and reinstall...

As for asking for help, well, I'm truelly baffled at this...

Re: 'interesting' Windows sound problems
 

It could very well be a registry problem if the reinstalling etc. didn't resolve the problem?

I tried looking through the Microsoft support sections but nothing came out that would be useful.

Re: 'interesting' Windows sound problems
 

My first thought was to look through the M$ support sections, but they're useless as ever.

The only thing I can think of is that the codecs M$ uses have somehow gotten corrupted, in which case I'll have to figure out where it stores those. Anybody happen to know that?

Re: 'interesting' Windows sound problems
 

I dont have the time right now to help you with this problem but i DO need to make a little comment to this:

Be very very very very careful about using the recovery console - more often then helping it will screw things up completely so you will be forced to re-install. It also has only very few useful tools compared to "real" recovery software (cant tell you a good one because i dont want to advertise here :)

Re: 'interesting' Windows sound problems
 

A better source for info are the newsgroups - check www.dejanews.com.