Video viewing issues (Not so fixed)Follow

Ok, here's my story:

A few days ago, I began to unable to play any videos. The audio would run, video would freeze. At the end of the video, the computer would also freeze.

So I did the normal stuff: Uninstalled recent programs (nada), reinstalled the player in question (WMP10), installed a different player (VLC). Fed up and about to just format the installation, I did one last search. I hadn't thought of it, but the site suggested reinstalling the video driver itself.

I thought it was weird since I could still play games and had no other signs of video issues. Uninstall and sure enough, videos played. I used Driver Cleaner to wipe out the rest of the driver files, and reinstall.

Same damn freezing happens.

So I turn off Hardware Accelleration. It works.

Now my question is: Is my video card toast? I can't even edge up one notch on the accelleration before videos freeze. It's a Radeon 9800 AGP, and about 3-4 years old. Are there any other steps I can take for this?

Update:

I was about to buy a new video card, figuring something must have gone wrong. Something told me to try to play a video in WinAmp first. I had already tried every other video player on my machine, and had installed VLC as well. So I doubted it would work

It did.

I did some more work on it. I removed all my video codecs, I uninstalled all the updates for Windows Media Player. None of this made any difference.

Then I downloaded CCleaner on a whim. I'm not one for using these automated registry maintenance tools. But in this case there were a lot of unlinked registry issues. I ran the tool, deleted the keys, and voila! Videos now work flawlessly in Media player.

Edited, Jul 23rd 2007 12:07pm by Pawkeshup

Edited, Aug 1st 2007 4:20am by Pawkeshup

Edited, Aug 1st 2007 7:50pm by Pawkeshup

Use a bigger hammer, it always worked for me.

Maybe there is.

I was getting ready to go video card shopping when something told me to take one more shot at fixing this.

I mucked with settings, I removed everything related to Windows Media player.

Then I tried viewing the files in Winamp.

******* winamp works perfectly with accelleration turned on.

So obviously there's something else going on.

Funny you should mention that.

Here's where I'm at so far.

I removed all the codecs I had for video, then reinstalled them (I removed them from Sound -> Hardware -> Video Codec -> Remove individually).

Still did it.

Now here's the screwed up thing. If I open a video, and it freezes, I can open another player and it works. I really REALLY don't want to do a reinstall considering the length of time FFXI will take to reinstall...

Any further ideas?

What OS are you using? (If its Vista your video card might not be supported, you'll have to upgrade)

Have you tried reseating the video driver? Checking to make sure the fan on it (if any) is operational still? Finally try reinstalling the driver.