In a recent column, we looked at problems installing common media players. We found that various simple errors often made the install task much harder to do. We also found that vendors didn't provide nearly as much help as they could on their Web sites to either find their player downloads or to find support.

This time around we have some work to do with MP3/audio players. Once again, we find that vendors aren't doing enough on even some simple issues to help resolve our frustrations. Since the preferred choice of media player is still up for grabs, one would think that vendors would outdo themselves in making problems easy to resolve. For me as a content developer, having a reliable streaming media player is just about essential today.

Imagine, then, as a network administrator you get a call from one of your Windows 98 users. They report the following error message from their streaming audio player:
"WinAmp 2 WaveOut plug-in v1.03 error
Please reinstall sound card drivers
Error code: 7
Windows error message:
MMSYSTEM007: There is not enough memory available for this task. Quit one or more programs then try again."

\If I were a typical user, I would take the application's word for it, and assume that my sound card drivers need upgrading or have become corrupted. Let's suppose you take this tack and go through the agony of identifying the sound card. This may actually require opening the box, since sound card drivers can depend on firmware versions only identified on the board itself. Fortunately, you chose a Creative SoundBlaster to ensure an easy update process. You download the updates and install them. Guess what? The problem isn't fixed.

Since you're a design studio, you've made sure everyone is running 512MB or 1GB RAM, so the second part of the error message, "there is not enough memory," seems bogus. Still, you try a reboot with only the MP3 player active. Still no luck. Maybe reinstall WinAmp? Nope, still no go.

You now try the WinAmp Web site for support. Unfortunately, there isn't a support section at the site, only a set of searchable forums. Fair enough, but searching for "Error code: 7" doesn't yield any results. Searching on "error code" yields 17 pages of references. Searching on the MMSYSTEM007 does yield some four pages of references. But there's not a lot of help with these. "Try updating your sound card drivers." "Try reinstalling the app." "Try unloading all your anti-virus software." "Try reinstalling Windows." I don't know about you, but I'd sooner give up on the player than endure another reinstall of Windows.

So now you try other players to see if you can just drop WinAmp as an approved app on your system. Now you'll find that it's not WinAmp at all. Run RealOne on the same MP3 file and it also says, "Out of Memory—You may need to close other applications to play this content."

You try Windows Media Player, and it seems to play the file. But five seconds into the MP3 file it freezes. At least with RealOne you could close the application normally.

Once again, you try the Real and the Microsoft Web sites for help on your player problem. Unfortunately, none of the sites (including Microsoft's) has a simple list of error messages. With all that Web sites can do today, why can't we get a list of error messages as a standard FAQ?

No thanks to the vendors, here's how we finally solve the problem: First, this particular error is not the fault of WinAmp (or Real). It invariably happens on my system when Internet Explorer 6 crashes. This causes some Windows Media files to become corrupted, thus blocking WinAmp, Real, and even WMP from playing.

The fix appears at the Microsoft support site. Search for MMSYSTEM007—a Windows error message. This yields but one citation—KnowledgeBase Article Q178677—that is totally unrelated to players, but actually fixes the problem. (It describes a problem with Flight Simulator.)

The article's first suggestion: reinstall the players. As you know, this doesn't help. The second part describes using a tool called System File Checker (SFC) to replace corrupted files. SFC comes with Windows like Regedit. If you type "SFC" into your desktop's Start/Run dialog, SFC launches and gives you a way to replace individual Windows files. (This is why some users, using the blunt-instrument approach of reinstalling Windows, sometimes get their systems working again. But the problem is it has to replace all the files, not just the corrupted ones.)

Q178677 gives me a list of eight media files to replace. It would never have occurred to me that some of these, like MSVIDEO.DLL, might need replacing in order to fix a sound problem, but they do. (I've tried replacing one at a time and MSVIDEO is required.) There's a ninth file, MMSYSTEM.DLL, that sometimes also needs replacing, which SFC can handle as well.

With a warm reboot, WinAmp, RealOne, and Media Player come back happy and ready to play MP3s as loud as ever. In the end, the painful part was not reinstalling the files. It was the struggle to find out what was wrong.

The moral of our story, then, is one for our partners—our vendors. For those of you listening, here it is: If you are going to present us with error messages, give us an easy way to find out what they mean. Make an online, searchable list of product error codes a standard part of any software vendor Web site today. And if you really want me to like you, how about telling me how to resolve those errors as well?