my new SanDisk Cruzer micro USB “smart” flash drive is plugged in. Whether I double click on a media file of some kind (avi, wmv, whatever) or just start up the program directly, it immediately quits. When I unplug the flash drive everything works fine. Bizarre, huh? Any ideas?
What you need to do is…
Touché. I didn’t know how long I could make the subject line. I suppose I could have titled the thread “Flash Drive/WMP 11 weirdness” or something.
Just… keep it unplugged? Otherwise, I’ve got no advice.
WMP11 sucks, unfortunately. You might try uninstalling, which gives you the option to “roll back” to Media Player 10 assuming you’ve had it installed.
Tying Media Player so heavily into the system is probably the biggest fuckup of XP.
OH! Also; get Media Money. Much better.
I picked up a cruzer last year that had a strange hidden partition in it - it would prevent it from acting like a normal USB key (you couldn’t make it a boot device for example.)
The fix is to remove that partition - sandisk has a utility to do that.
http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1GGLS_en-USUS292US304&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=cruzer+remove
Always format your new USB storage devices. They tend to be full of crap (or even viruses/trojans :).
Always format your new USB storage devices. They tend to be full of crap (or even viruses/trojans :).
Just do it from Windows, you mean? Right click on drive icon and hit Format?
Yes, or do it through Disk Management (start->run->diskmgmt.msc).
UPDATE: Turns out the problem (as is often the case when something weird is happening) had to do with Windows Media Player DRM. Funny, since I have no protected content (unless the sample music and pics and such that come with Win XP are protected)-- these two links gave clues to fixing my problem (many thanks to the kind folks at ArsTechnica openforum/Microsoft OS and Software Colloquium):
http://www.nntpnews.net/f3919/re-wmp11-vista-sync-crash-450994/
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/891664
Once I deleted the stuff in the C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\DRM folder, “voilà, she is fixed.” My flash drive and WM Player work fine together now.
UPDATE: Turns out the problem (as is often the case when something weird is happening) had to do with Windows Media Player DRM. Funny, since I have no protected content (unless the sample music and pics and such that come with Win XP are protected)-- these two links gave clues to fixing my problem (many thanks to the kind folks at ArsTechnica openforum/Microsoft OS and Software Colloquium):
http://www.nntpnews.net/f3919/re-wmp11-vista-sync-crash-450994/
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/891664
Once I deleted the stuff in the C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\DRM folder, “voilà, she is fixed.” My flash drive and WM Player work fine together now.