Ok, I'm not a novice computer user, but I'm not a genius either. But for the life of me, I can't figure out why this keeps happening. Awhile back, I copy a series of Desperate Housewives for my wife using CloneDVD and AnyDVD. Everything seemed to go normal. Well, lately, I've noticed, it seems, randoms .mp3 files that once worked fine, no longer work. Most of them now just play 10-15 seconds clips of Desperate Housewives. Most of the time video and audio, but some of them are just audio clips of the show now instead of my music. Also, now when I double click the .mp3 file, Windows Media Player tells me "The file you are attempting to play has an extension (.mp3) that does not match the file format. Playing the file may result in unexpected behavior." I've ran defrag and boot-time error checking to no avail. I'm using Windows Vista Home Edition. If someone knows if there is a way to fix the .mp3 files, please let me know, as it has wiped out the majority of my collection now. If more info is needed, just let me know. Thanks!
I can't understand how DVD video (VOB, IFO, and BUP files) can get mixed into your music collection of MP3 files? how does that happen? So let me get this straight....... let's say you want to play a song..... A BEATLES SONG....... and all of a sudden you get audio from a show like Desperate Housewives???? I have no idea how that would happen! and this is happening to most or your music files? most of your collection on your computer??? that's too weird for me! How does copying a show on DVD transfer to your MP3 music files with different names of songs and overwrite them to make them incompatible format for Windows Media Player??? So here is a simple solution: do a system restore to a previous date when everything was working properly... like the time before you did DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES!
This is truly a bizarre problem , using Vista myself & know that System Restore does work if needed. Also if you do not have Desperate Housewives on the HDD anymore it shouldn't be able to play them either. So make sure you have them video files removed from comp. Right click on one of your mp3s > properties> make sure that windows media player is default player. Have you installed another media player recently btw ? Just asking as it might've been that which made itself default player instead. Errmm .. other than that I'm at a loss too cos I've never heard of this dilemma before :S herbs
It's playing cached snippets. empty the windows\temp folder, and any other .tmp files you can find. I heard about this early last year.. about the time vista was released. It was reported as one of the ways M$ had condsidered to neuter the media capabilities of vista if you tried doing "disallowed" things. They backed down from actually removing supplier installed drivers as that could be seen as causing "physical damage" to your paid for hardware, and also interference with the operation of software that in no way belongs to M$ I saw it on a vista machine myself a few weeks ago.. it suddenly refused to play ANY music files at all after attempting to burn a multi track cd .bin image. It had worked perfectly just 3 days before. Found that the machine had received a forced manufacturer update (HP) that morning.. Cured it by removing all the codecs and reinstalling them after totally clearing the media player playlists and .tmp files, and then reinstalling the codecs. (haven't looked at the code because I don't have access,). I assume there is some wildcard redirect in action that directs any attempt to play a file with a mp3 tag to /tmp/*.mp3 (or hidden file type that media player knows is a cached file) string, which is why it's always the same kind of file playing. That's my best guess from the observed symptoms. I see a possible motive for it as well, but I'm not going into that.. I will lwave it for you to consider what might happen if you took the machine back for repair to a big chain who are obliged under the dmca to report any copyright infringing material on your drive.. Don't want to say "told you so" **smug**
Been using vista at home for the last 4 - 5 months and I've not encountered any major issues. Just the same as running XP Pro w/ a facelift imho.
