Windows Media Player crashes opening any video

[broadstairs]

I have an XP SP3 guest with WMP 11 freshly installed. I am unable to open any video file for playback without it crashing the whole guest. I am unable to do anything except use kill from System Monitor to exit the guest, none of the VirtualBox menus work. I am running this on a Mandriva 2010.1 host with 3.2.10 r66523. Has anyone any ideas if this could be a VirtualBox issue? I know WMP 11 has its own problems. I do have the latest additions installed as well. The video files are all local to the guest not streaming or networked.

Stuart

[stefan.becker]

Have you installed Guest Additions in safe mode?

If no, do it. If yes, forget it. You dont have the vga capabilities as on the host native.

[broadstairs]

Have you installed Guest Additions in safe mode?

If no, do it. If yes, forget it. You dont have the vga capabilities as on the host native.

Well no I hadn't, and yes I now have. It still makes no difference. I can see in system monitor the session is using CPU (varying a bit but around 13%), so it is trying to do something but I can leave it for a few minutes and nothing changes on screen. If I switch away from the guest or the screen saver kicks in the guest screen stays black, noting gets re-drawn.

Stuart

[broadstairs]

Well I just installed a fresh copy of XP with WMP 9 and guess what it crashes the guest as well, so it would seem like it could be VirtualBox causing the problem... any ideas greatfully received...

Stuart

[broadstairs]

Well I now know what to do to stop it happening. I had both 2D and 3D acceleration turned on in the Display options for the guest, turning them both off allows WMP to work OK. Now I have an ATI gfx card and use the proprietary drivers so I dont know if its the ATI drivers or VirtualBox which is at fault. All I can say for sure is that so far I've not had any other problems with the drivers. Anyway for now it works, but it would be good if possible to sort out why this happens.

Stuart

[Winipulator]

I believe the problem is the WMP video renderers and the limitations of the video portion of Guest Addons. I don't know if the video renderer can be changed in WMP. Personally, I haven't used WMP in years, as its too bloated and clunky. I use the freeware, open source Media Player Classic Home Cinema to watch videos. You can easily change the renderer in the options menu. In a Windows guest, I use the default overlay renderer, because the WMP 7 and WMP 9 overlays give error messages. Plus I can have both 2D and 3D acceleration enabled without causing any playback issues. Good luck to you.

[broadstairs]

I have a very specific use for WMP which is very brief and one of the reasons for having a Windows OS under VB, the other is testing my website on IE. Normally I view all videos in native Linux.

Stuart