Greg said:
Let me try again: If I go to internet options/programs, then click Set
Programs under internet program,s it brings up a dialog. I click
associate a
file type or... and scroll down to .asx. Right now it';s set to winamp
but
if I set it back to WMP, the fle type doesn't stream. Are you saying this
is
NOT the place to set the file associations? And yes, it's not just
cdconnection, and, in any case, cd connection was working up until
recently.
I've also used the set your default program option on the same dialog.
'Set your default programs' does per-user file associations, which is why I
explicitly referenced "Set Program Access and Defaults", which also allows
the player a minor chance to correct damage other utilities/players can do
to its associations. They're related but different. =)
None of your files stream, the only choices I get are open, save, cancel.
As far as I can tell, the only difference between open and save is where
it
places the file, but regardless it is downloaded before playing.
Interesting: is that with WMP or WinAMP set as default? This is obviously
incorrect behavior and a likely sign that the file association is indeed set
wrong. I had kind of been moving away from that as a suspected cause, but
your system behaving this way does indicate that it is currently set
incorrectly.
Some change I have made since pursuing this problem now causes the streams
on cdconnection to fail without an error message. I click, it appears to
do
a quick download but nothing comes up so I can no longer tell you where it
goes when I click Web Help. I can tell you it suggested codec,
compression
or corrupted file.
Wouldn't it be nice if MS allowed me to unistall WMP 11 so I could
reinstall
it thereby reestablishing the associations and/or repairing whatever the
problem is?
Yes, it's too bad that MS doesn't offer this functionality that would *not*
have reestablished the associations and/or likely repaired whatever the
problem is. ;-)
The basic BOMs (install designs) are on your system and can be inspected.
You'll note that the player install design is to be friendly to other
players that take associations, which thus means that associations are not
reestablished.* It also operates on a global (per-machine) level only,
really, so if you are experiencing user-level corruption (verifiable via
trying this on a second account on the system), it would be unlikely to
repair the problem in question. Does this work for a new user account on
your system? (Note that system-wide association corruption/mis-setting
would also affect a second user, so this isn't definitive, just potentially
interesting.)
* These registrations are done in config sections designed not to overwrite
settings done by other players. The (system) component installer has no
mechanism for determining if the association chain is valid, and since that
could change as components (shell, IE) get updated, there would be no
persistent way to determine that. Windows Media Player's SPAD
implementation is your only chance to give the player the reins to reset
things back to "normal" if they were corrupt. SYDP operates via the shell
parsing the application's Capabilities information, which does not allow the
player to reset any system-wide corruption. Capabilities points to
something along the lines of WMP11.AssocFile.ASF - if Player XYZ decides to
corrupt WMP11.AssocFile.ASF, SYDP doesn't and can't correct for that (it
doesn't know). SPAD *can* correct for that (with the additional notation
that it's always possible to do righteously horrible things to file
associations, so it's always best to use your own named hive. You would
think that with a name like "WMP11.something" other apps would not stomp on
those subkeys, but you'd be surprised. The WMP code will try to repair
damage done to the "WMP11.something" hives if I recall correctly, but it
isn't always possible.)
Let's get back to core interesting questions as opposed to tangenting over
to underlying technology which I find fascinating but you likely find a
waste of your time:
* Did you try SPAD?
* Does it work for a second account?
* What are the values and subkeys under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.asx and under
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\WMP11.AssocFile.ASX ?
-Zach
I still