Waiting For Microsoft to call

Yesterday was kind of interesting.

I decided to call MS support line and pony up the bucks for a solution to a problem that has been plaguing me since I built my new computer. Only on MSN Video and while using Internet Explorer. Currently it plays the advertisements and the first video. Then crashes when it trys to play the next advertisement.

We were on the phone for 3 hours and he connected to my machine remotely and still no resolve. He decided to pass it on to Senior Tech Support and they are supposed to call today after 11 am sometime. He looked over alot of the things I had already done many times trying to figure it out.

It has something to do with IE though, Firefox with the beta pluggin can play several videos before it just finally stops.Never get any errors though and Firefox doesn't crash doing it. I just have to hit the refresh button to get it going again.

My guess is that it has something to do with javascript actually. But we will see if they can actually fix it.

Even if they can't. they decided to give the support for free this time and the Tech was very professional and knowledgable.

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I had those kinds of problems on the family computer as well. I think I ended up reinstalling (it was WIn2k and upgraded to XP). Next set of computers for the family will be Mac. Less of those kinds of problems.
— PhoneBoy
This problem occurs right out of the gate on a fresh install. I don't think MS will be able to fix it actually. But we will see.
— TechZilla
That's interesting news - I've never made an official support call to MS before. I did just go through a webinar on using the debugger to analyze a core dump and I think I'm on the right track to a current blue screen issue. It wasn't as bad as I thought - I haven't been through memory dumps since I worked on a mainframe. I did read yesterday where a guy was having problems with blue screens on his brand new computer and he found out that the wireless driver was causing the problem. He attached it using a cable and the problem vanished - that's how he finally nabbed it.
— dewitte
I avoid calling MS whenever possible and usually don't have to. I can solve most problems. This one though I'm not holding my breath on. I doesn't actually do a bluescreen it just crashes IE. It will play 1 advertisment video and then the first clip. If I stop the video it trys to play right at the very end and then select play on the next video in the playlist it will play the advert and then the video just fine. My guess is the problem is in how my system is processing the playlist script. My entire system checks out hardware wise and this is the only problem I have with it. Firefox with the windows media beta pluggin works fine, so I've isolated it down to IE.
— TechZilla