Computer issues. I'm stumped.
 

I have two computers, an old Dell DimensionL566cx PC running Win 2000 Pro and a newer Gateway 4024 laptop running Win XP Home. The PC has a fairly new 110GB hard drive and about 320+ MB of ram. Both computers run identical NOD32 anti virus software.

The problem is this: Whenever I download a .AVI file via Bit Torrent, my PC can't seem to do anything with it, and I mean nothing. None of my media programs will successfully run it and neither will any of my three DVD burner programs run it. In fact, even Windows Explorer will balk when I fiddle with the downloaded file. It's crazy. The message I get is always the same "(insert program name here).exe has generated errors and will be closed by windows. An error log has been created."

The crazy thing is that if I drag the file over to my little portable drive and then plug it into the laptop, the file executes just fine. No problem there.

WTF? I am completely defeated here. I have no idea what's happening.

Also, I'm leaving on a two day trip tomorrow morning so if I don't respond to your posts it's because I'm working. However, tomorrow night I'll be able to check responses after 9 PM. Thanks for any help you can offer.

Sounds like its time for an Apple.

try downloading vlc mediaplayer...

sounds like you have crappy decoder plugins in media player ( and as such also in most other non ms players)

vlc mediaplayer has his own decoders, and as such is not affected by any crappy decoders in windows

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/


and it also has decodes for just about any encoding that's out there..

DivX player.

Download it, its free and your life will be much easier. My copilot over here had the same issues two days ago and after doing this he said that it works great.

Try it...

Re: Computer issues. I'm stumped.
 

The internal ram on your PC, at just 320mb, is on the small side for graphics work. You didn't say what the amount of internal ram on your laptop is, but I'd bet it's at least 512mb or larger. If you have open memory slots on your PC, I'd fill them, or go to the largest ram memory cards you can cram in there, memory for an older, slower computer isn't very expensive these days.

internal memory wouldn't affect video playing abilities... at least not if nothhing else is running... true, more is better, but it won't fix this error...

It could be that Win2k is using WMP 9 and XP uses WMP 10....i run in to this alot.. There are differenced for AVI's and the WMP compatibility (blame MS for this).

get VLC player

I wonder if you got some "funk" from the internet that overwrote a necessary file to launch WMP. Then after scanning with AV or Antispy...your scan marked the file as a "bad guy" and quarantined it or deleted it?

Sad part is...sometimes its quicker to do a total reinstall of the OS.

Thanks for all of the advice guys. I'll be back home tomorrow night and I'll try a few of things you mentioned.

There might be some help in the event logs.
start => Control Panel => Administrative tools => Event Viewer => Applications.
I agree it's likely to be a decoder problem.

Good luck,
Scott

vlc +1
ryan

:(

Well, a small part of the issue is taken care of. I can now VIEW my .AVI files using VideoLAN vlc. I downloaded it, installed the full version, and am now able to watch the videos.

However...

I am still being presented with these messages:

"SuperDVDCreator.exe has generated errors and will be closed by Windows. You will need to restart the program. An error log is being created."

and

"PExpress.exe has generated errors and will be closed by Windows. You will need to restart the program. An error log is being created."

and

"dvdSanta.exe has generated errors and will be closed by Windows. You will need to restart the program. An error log is being created."

Still stumped.

OK. The problem I've been having (for months) seems to have been solved.

I looked down in my Systray and noted that I had a LOT of icons down there. I decided to check them and noticed that I had at least two that were related to videos in some form and noted that they were .exe files (which meant they were running). One was Bit Torrent (which I use to download bit torrent files but which I didn't realize had installed itself in my systray) and the other was one of my DVD/CD burning programs, Pinnacle Instant CD/DVD.

I decided there was certainly no need for either one of these in my systry so I removed them using a little utility that allows me to easily play around with the systray. I did a restart, noted that my systray was now clear of these programs and attempted once again to use one of my DVD burning programs to copy this little South Park episode that's been causing all of these problems (as had just about every other TV episode I'd downloaded using Bit Torrent, btw).

It worked. What a surprise. It seems that Bit Torrent was somehow using my downloaded copy of South Park to seed out to other Bit Torrent users (which is what it does, btw) and in the process was basically tying it up so that my burner utilities and Windows Media Player couldn't use it and would generate an error message instead. I guess that's what you'd call a sharing error.

Now that I control when Bit Torrent is being used instead of it self launching without my knowledge, I shouldn't have this issue anymore. I hope.