At 08:00 PM 08/24/2000 , Don Kendrew wrote:
>I recently reformatted and installed Win 98, version #1 on a friend's AMD
>350 with 6.4 GB HDD, 192 Mb Ram, ATI 4 Mb video, SB 16bit Audio.
>
>He has had the computer for about two months, and has recently discovered
>that he cannot play a mpeg video file. . . also if he downloads an mpeg
>from the net it shows up on his HDD as a .vps file.
>
>Trying to open either this .vbs, or an mpeg he receives the following message:
>
>"MMSYSTEM296 The file cannot be played on the specified MCI device. The
>file may be corrupt, or not in the correct format."
>
>The only thing he can tell me is that he installed the latest Window's
>Media Player, did not like it, and uninstalled it, using an uninstall utility.
>
>We do not know if this condition was in evidence right after the
>installation of Win98 or not. . . it had not occurred to us to check this
>out right after the install.


I believe you probably already know that the solution is to reinstall the new
Windows Media Player.   Yes, when it first installs, it looks quite different,
but it can be easily configured to look like the older version.   The error
message concerns the lack of Video Compression CODECs on this
system.  These are compressed media decompressors, as MPEG
consists of many different compression schemes and many are added
all the time.  This is similar to a ZIP file.  If you do not have software
on your computer to UNZIP a ZIP file, you cannot open it.  So it is
with MPEG video files...  you need CODECs to uncompress them.

You can download nearly all of the most popular CODECs from this
web site: http://www.terran.com/CodecCentral/Codecs/index.html
Just download them and install.

As to your question about why your system is converting .MPEG or
.MPG files to .VBS (virtual basic scripts), I have no answer.  This
should not occur.  The files should simply save in the format sent.

    Bob Wright
The NOSPIN Group

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