We tried to upgrade to Windows Media Player 7.1 on our Win98 machine last night. When we rebooted, we got to the point where the normal windows background appears, and then a window popped up. The window’s title is “Personalized Settings” and the message in the Window is “Setting up personalized settings for:” but the rest of the window is blank. It is content to sit like this forever with no activity obvious to the casual observer. (Not accessing hard drive, at least.)
We can get rid of the window by ctrl-alt-deling and clicking “End Task”, but then Windows doesn’t finish starting up–Explorer doesn’t launch. We can restart from the ctrl-alt-del window, but once the machine has rebooted, the same window pops up again, and again we can’t get into Windows.
Oddly enough, the screen saver still kicks in after 5 minutes of idle.
So, two questions: 1) How do we get rid of this thing so we can get into Windows? and 2) How would one go about increasing one’s chances of successfully installing Media Player?
Boot into Windows Safe Mode and uninstall all your Windows Media, then try a normal reboot again. If that doesn’t work, I can’t troubleshoot it not knowing anything else. If it works, then re-read the Windows Media documentation and make sure your system can support it… then just give it another try- sometimes these things are just one-time glitches in the installation.
I too upgraded the media player. And, I too, had the same kinds of problems as the O.P… I forgot what I did to finally get it to go, but it was along the lines of what was suggested- uninstall, re-install, and fiddle around a bit afterwards.
Any rate, once I got it to go, I hated it. It was way more than what I wanted. It was a monster sized app to boot.
So, I went back to the older version. I like it.
My question: When I go to wipe my drive in a month or two and re-install everything on it, I’m worried I’ll be stuck having to upgrade to the version I don’t like.
Are there sites, or a program I could run now, that would save the version I like?
Podkayne, typically with Windows95 and above, you hit f8 to get into the boot prompt menu which will allow you to select safe mode. I agree with the suggestion of deinstalling the media player stuff first and then reinstalling. I’m more of a unix guy but I use ME and 2000 at home also.
Podkayne isn’t having a problem with the system becoming corrupt, un-bootable, or things along those lines. It’s an obvious problem with the upgraded windows mediaplayer not taking to the system. The first step in resolving any problem of this kind is to uninstall, check the system, and re-install. If it continues to fail, we need more info on what’s going to narrow down the specific problem.
Podkayne, the advice handy offers should not be tried at this point of ‘blame the bad app’ game.
Don’t worry, Chris, I know handy’s reputation, and I wouldn’t follow his advice unless it was backed up by someone else.
However, in this case, after uninstalling Windows Media Player didn’t fix the problem, we did end up restoring a previous registry (based on the Windows troubleshooting guide, not handy’s post, which I hadn’t even seen yet), and now things are working again.
We haven’t summoned the intestinal fortitude to try reinstalling Media Player yet–I’m leaning toward trying some freeware or shareware, though.