Mpegs won't play on anything?

Question

Hi, I have recently started to have a problem playing mpeg videos. I installed a new hard drive and copied the videos off my old hard drive. However, when I try to play them in Windows Media Player, Real Player or DivX Video Player, I get an error on all of them.

On Windows Media Player it says it encountered a problem while playing the file, on Real Player it says a general (unspecified) error has occured and on DivX Video Player it says the file does not appear to contain video tracks.

I have copied the videos onto a CD and played them on a friends computer and they all work no problem.

I have also noticed that if I download an mpeg video off the Internet but choose to open it rather than save it to disc, it works ok but if I save it to disc and try and load it then I get the error messages as stated above.

I have absolutely no idea why they aren't working as they worked before I installed my new hard drive.

Thanks for any suggestions they are much appreciated.
Gareth.

Answer 1

Well I would recommend the following



Possibility 1:

A- Update your media player to make sure everything's OK (e.g. File Length correct, not corrupted, etc.)

B- Download FFDShow, if you haven't done so already.

C- Load the file in GSpot and render it

D- Play it in MPC

E- If everything's OK then woohoo!! If not let's continue with the possibilities



possibility 2: you need some codec for your media player: you can download them here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=06fcaab7-dcc9-466b-b0c4-04db144bb601&displaylang=en



Possibility 3:

A- Re-checking is always good stuff

B- Try a different player to play the file with, like B$Player and DivX(comes with DivX codec) or XviD Player

C- Still not working? Well then my friend, meyer proceed...



Possibility 4:

A- Combine Possibilty 1 and 2



Possibility 5:

A- Uninstall ALL Codecs and try the combo of the following:

--->DivX Codec

--->XviD Codec

--->FFDShow

--->B$Player

B- After installing all that, render the file with GSpot

C- If this doesn't work, so kill me or just post more info on your situation



**NOTE** These suggestions were from my personal experiences with codecs. Yeah... let's just say my computer wasn't too happy with me that night (it's not even happy with me even now )

Answer 2

Hi

You've said you have installed a new Hard drive - in order to do so, I expect you may have re-installed the operating system. If this is the case, I dare to ask if you installed Windows Vista?

I did my own upgrade to Vista and while I knew pretty much nothing would work, it was purely "look and see" purposes. I had massive problems especially with video, and here's why: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html



It's a long read, but somewhat informative...

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

Sounds like a codec problem ,use "power dvd " or "VLC player ",both of these applications will play most files.

Answer 4

is your old hard drive still connected ?



is the old harddrive in fat 32 format and the new one in ntfs ??



have you created a valid partition on the new harddrive



sounds like it is hardware to me



if your old one is still connected have made sure the jumpers are set properly ??



i would have to say hardware though