Windows Media Player can't swing the darn hammer 4

[EdwardMartinIII]

A few weeks back, I could play music CDs by popping the CD in the drive and closing it. Eventually, my lovely computer would figure out it had a music CD, open up WIndows Media Player, and play it.

What was so hard about that?

Last week, I pop it in and am told

Windows Media Player encountered an error when reading the CD-ROM drive in digital mode. Click OK to switch to analog mode. Click Cancel to retry playing in digital mode.

Hey, digital mode seems like a reasonable thing for a CD, so I click "Cancel". The error window goes away and Windows Media Player sits there, daring me to click the PLAY button. I do. Same error message.

Okay, evidently digital mode is bad, m'kay. So I click "OK".

Quietly, my speakers mock me.

Ah, but here's ANOTHER error message:

WIndows Media Player encountered an error when reading the CD-ROM drive in digital mode. You can try to use digital mode again, or you can switch the Player to analog mode.

Clearly, digital mode is not the way to go. Because I'm naive, I click "More information" and a helpful Helpie window thingy tells me

1. On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the Devices tab

Easy so far, there's a few devices there. Now it tells me

Double-click the CD-ROM drive, and then in the Playback area, click Digital.

Does it say "If nothing happens when you double-click the CD-ROM drive, then click here. No. Why? Because I would click there and that would be too easy.

So, nothing happens when I double-click the drive. Well, nothing for longer than a fraction of a second. A window looks like it tried popping up, but it is almost immediately vanishified. I don't get a chance to read it or anything. It's just gone. I double-click the other things and I get properties, but not this. I double-click the DVD-RAM drive and nothing pops up, either.

According to this:

http://forums.thetechguys.com/archive/index.php/t-5414.html

it might be a hardware issue of some sort. Except I didn't have this hardware issue until a few weeks ago (I think). Plus, the article seems to suggest that this only applies to Media Player 7.

According to this:

http://www.zachd.com/pss/pss.html#0xc00d11f8

Q: Why am I getting error 0xc00d11f8 - "Windows Media Player encountered an error when reading the CD-ROM drive in digital mode. You can try to use digital mode again, or you can switch the Player to analog mode."?
You need to go to the player's Tools:Optionsevices menu option, select the Properties for that drive and change to use Analog mode. If that doesn't work, read on...
I've heard that "DVD Region Killer" caused this problem for one person. They ran System Restore to get help get rid of it, and then things worked fine again.

The hardware's stayed the same, and I don't even know what DVD Region Killer is much less installed it. I suppose I could try System Restore, but after I post this note.

This machine is a Compaq Presario 7994. I am using Windows Media Player 9, which, according to Windows Media Player, is the latest version.

Any advice?

Thanks!

Edward

"Cut a hole in the door. Hang a flap. Criminy, why didn't I think of this earlier?!" -- inventor of the cat door

 

[TekTippy4U]

Thank you 'both' for responding;
cdogg for jarring the jello in my head into remembering the "driver fracus".
and Edward.....Thanks..that's what I had thought and wanted to confirm. The older CDROMs don't use Digital Audio mode (that's not to say anything else - except that the signal is converted to analog for sound - I even have a DVD-ROM that does this). Your System seems to have been built around the "cusp" of time when DA was advented into market. Sometime around 2K-2K1, and prevalent with PIII's, was the market starting more with AC-3 spkrs. as standard.
OR
It's simply a matter of wire-connectors in the back of ATAPI unit to it's DA section on one end and Soundcard (Onboard Audio) capabilities on the other. (How does AC97 fit into this?).
and possibly Audio Codecs, and whatever software App/ Media player functionality...I would think all of these components would need to be able to process and keep the orig. signal.

Ahh....no worry, I'll research it more when I get the chance


TT4U

Notification:
These are just my thoughts....and should be carefully measured against other opinions.
Backup All Important Data/Docs

 

[cdogg]

TT4U,
Yeah, this is becoming a long thread but one last thing...


One of the Microsoft articles linked above mentioned that some older soundcards didn't have the ability to render digital audio. Because of that, this option would be grayed out. Once sound hits your speakers, it has to be analog. It doesn't matter what component in your system does the conversion - quality is the same either way.

All CD-ROM drives have the ability to convert Digital into Analog, which saves CPU resources because it's done in the hardware. The benefits are only noticeable on slower systems and not needed on say a 2GHz+ PC. The option to "Enable Digital..." forces the conversion to happen on the software side and solely depends on the soundcard and driver. It's an option that's nice when you have more than one CD-ROM drive so you don't have to run an analog cable from each drive to the soundcard. BUT IT'S NOT NEEDED on systems with only one CD-ROM, AND WON'T MAKE A DIFFERENCE ON QUALITY!

Just some food for thought!
A lot of good points made in this thread...


~cdogg
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