# streaming media: please help!!

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/streaming-media-please-help/314486>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [July 28, 2005, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/streaming-media-please-help/314486 "2005-07-28T00:02:22Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![chrisk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@chrisk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chrisk)\
**Post date:** [July 28, 2005, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/streaming-media-please-help/314486/1 "2005-07-28T00:02:22Z")

</div>

I hope someone can point me in the right direction with this… it’s an annoyance that I’ve gotten really tired of.

My fancy media center desktop won’t stream media… at least, it won’t stream anything in the microsoft WMP formats. (which is a lot of what’s around lately, it seems.)

If and when I can get an error message at all, it’s usually something like ‘specified protocol is not supported.’ I can go into the settings dialog box and all the protocol settings are checked off. Usually trying to figure out exactly what the streaming address is and what protocol it’s supposed to be is something that seems too complicated to figure out.

I’ve googled the error message and tried the microsoft support site, but nobody seems to have any information that’s relevant to this specific situation. Can any of you bright dopers help me out?? I just want to be able to preview some music I’m interested in buying, watch music videos at yahoo. Heck, even the video links in media player’s own “media guide” section won’t play nice.

Grrrrr. Thanks in advance if anyone replies.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![chrisk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@chrisk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chrisk)\
**Post date:** [July 28, 2005, 10:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/streaming-media-please-help/314486/2 "2005-07-28T10:23:46Z")

</div>

bumping hopefully.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\
**Post date:** [August 3, 2005, 7:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/streaming-media-please-help/314486/3 "2005-08-03T07:22:17Z")

</div>

Have you tried [redownloading](http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/download/download.aspx) and reinstalling Windows Media Player 10?

If that doesn’t help, hmm… what exactly are you trying to view (please provide a URL if possible)?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\
**Post date:** [August 3, 2005, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/streaming-media-please-help/314486/4 "2005-08-03T17:14:31Z")

</div>

Yeah, give us a link to the files you’re trying to view.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![chrisk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@chrisk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chrisk)\
**Post date:** [August 3, 2005, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/streaming-media-please-help/314486/5 "2005-08-03T17:43:26Z")

</div>

Um, actually I solved this on my own. 😃

as per a help page [here](http://www.nwlink.com/~zachd/pss/pss.html), I renamed a particular folder in my windows profile and let WMP regenerate it. Not quite sure what was so horribly wrong in there, but the trick definitely worked. Reinstalling might have worked too, I didn’t bother with that.

Thanks anyway!!