mplayer2 fails to launch!

[zambelli]

Mplayer2.exe fails to launch under Win2K (SP1; WMP7.1). I can't open
it via association, from the command line, from the start menu -
nothing. Every time I start it, however, 2 instances of mplayer2.exe
appear in Task Manager. Both are the same size and just sit there and
idle.

I found a similar problem posted to a newsgroup a few months ago,
but nobody replied to it. Does anyone know how to fix this?

Here's the link to the other report of this problem:

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=mplayer2+fails&hl=en&selm=855b58b8.0110231731.79d5cd67%40posting.google.com&rnum=1

[zambelli]

I find it amazing how no one in the entire world has a solution to this problem. It's been experienced by two completely unrelated users, thus it is real and not a coincidence. The problem has been posted in a Media Player support newsgroup, in several other newsgroups, e-mailed to Microsoft and posted here, and yet no one has any clue. Amazing.

[tiki4]

Well, I really don't have a solution for your problem. But I can tell you what I am doing in such a case: Try reinstalling windows. I know this is very often quite much work, but take a look at doom9's notes in the newbie guide somewhere around here. He's been used to reinstall every two weeks and still is somewhere with every two to three months. I think I'm reinstalling more often (Win2K SP2) but that's just that I play around with too many filters and encoding software at a time... seems to always mess up something in my setup. Well, I'm a freak, I must admit, I always want to have the latest of everything.

CU,

tiki4

[zambelli]

I used to reinstall Windows every few months back in the Win9x days, but not anymore. Ever since Win2K I've been ultra-happy with the Windows OS. I've had my present Win2K installation running for probably over a year now and I've had absolutely no problems at all... until this damn Media Player problem. Everything else on my computer works EXACTLY like it should. I've got a bunch of stuff tweaked and it would really take a lot of work to reinstall the system and get it back to this awesome state. Unless some major shit happens to my system, I don't plan on reinstalling it for quite a while. But thanks for the suggestion... :)

[tiki4]

Hehe,

you are of course right. I went through the whole scenario: Win 3.1, Win95, Win98 WinNT and finally Win2K. MS promised then to produce a stable, reliable OS as an successor of NT4. I installed on the first day 2K came out, something like Feb. 1999 and stick to it since then.
On the other hand I'm always trying this and that and never care too much about keeping the system stable. Even Win2K gets problems after some time installing, uninstalling, tweaking so I still reinstall whenever I am in the mood for that.
Otherwise my system is running completely stable with one exception: My WinTV makes huge trouble. I posted that in the Hardware forum but it seems that no one can help me so far...

So, what I wanted to say is that I still think that something's got messed up in your setup and as a long time Windows user I think the fastest way to get it working is IMHO reinstalling. That's really much work (read my specs in the Hardware forum, you won't get much more in one machine) sometimes but you may use something like DriveImage to get it faster next time. Sorry, nothing else I can say.