PowerPoint, .wma file plays on Win2000 but not XP

[srogers]

I inserted a .wma file in PowerPoint on my Win2000 machine and then saved it with Pack and Go and the Viewer. I unpacked it and burned all the files to a CD. It plays fine on all my 2000 machines at home.

The machine I'm making it for is an XP. Once I was able to go to the XP machine and test it there the presentation plays but with no sound. If I browse for the audio files, I can play them on the XP machine but I can't get the presentation to play with the sound.

If I open the presentation by itself and double-click on the speaker icon, I get an error that says: "The specified file cannot be played on the specified MCI device. The file may be corrupt, not in the correct format, or no fil" (the message cuts off there).

Any ideas?
Thank you.

 

[srogers]

From what I can find on the internet, it looks like PowerPoint uses Media Player (it came out before Windows Media Player), go to run, type in mplay32 to open it, to play the sound files. If some other application - like RealPlayer - has disabled it, then the sounds won't play. Perhaps another file type would work.

I tried playing my .wma files with it and they would not play.
Thanks anyway.

 

[EV1772]

Hi srogers, I've got the same problem. Did you ever find a resolution for it? I have a .wmv file in a PowerPoint slide and it plays fine in PowerPoint 2003. However if I play it on PowerPoint 2000, which is also on the same machine, I get the same error as you. My OS is Windows 2000.

 

[srogers]

Not yet. I was lucky in that the person I sent the CD to was able to hear the music/sounds with the presentation on his XP machine. So I think it has something to do with the programs/configuration you have loaded. I'm wondering if converting the sound file to an .mp3 would work. I'm overloaded with work right now and haven't been able to work on it further but still hope to.
Good luck to you and sorry I wasn't really able to contribute.
Sharon

 

[EV1772]

Not a problem. I'll let you know if I find something too.

It's wierd that it won't play the wma file. I don't know if your using Windows Media Player 9 or not but they also have an update for it. It may help.

Good Luck!

 

[EV1772]

Sharon,

You might want to try this when you get a chance. I had a problem playing this particular .wmv file with mplayer32.exe. If the file could not be played with this application it would not play in PPT 2000 and I would get the same error message as you. I was able play other .wmv files with mplayer32 so it seemed to be a problem with this particular file. I then did a Windows Update with IE and installed the DirectX 9.0b End-User Runtime Update. This did the trick and I was able to play the .wmv file in mplayer32 and in turn worked perfectly in my PPT presentation. I had read somewhere in the MSDN library that DirectX had updates to various Microsoft CODECS and since it was the only thing I hadn't updated yet, I thought I'd give it a shot. Finally it worked!

Maybe it can work for you? Good Luck!