# Windoes Media Player trouble - flashing screen **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 27, 2003, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/windoes-media-player-trouble-flashing-screen/157867 "2003-02-27T13:43:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2003, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/windoes-media-player-trouble-flashing-screen/157867/1 "2003-02-27T13:43:45Z")
When I try to play WM movies, they commonly flash off and on. I don’t know why, and it does this even when the movie is not playing, but paused or somehting. ANyone know why? It flashes back and forth from a blanck, black screen to the normal picture. ---
**Author:** ![Davebear](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bcef8e/32.png) [@Davebear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Davebear)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2003, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/windoes-media-player-trouble-flashing-screen/157867/2 "2003-02-27T15:23:09Z")
Just a WAG, but do you happen to be using a really slow, old computer? It sounds like the data isn’t streaming fast enough. My guess is that either the hard drive or the video card can’t keep up. ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2003, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/windoes-media-player-trouble-flashing-screen/157867/3 "2003-02-27T16:02:06Z")
I had this problem when I re-installed Windows XP. I got all the updates, including the spiffy new nVidia driver with the special control panel, so I THOUGHT I had the latest drivers but after installing what I found on the nVidia Web site (driver-wise) that fixed the problem. Soooo…maybe try updating your video drivers?