Is there a freeware alternative to Windows Media Player that will handle all
of the media formats that WMP will play (audio and video)?

A friend of mine is running Win98SE on an old machine that she mostly uses
for e-mail and light surfing.  When someone sends a Windows Media format
file to her via attachment, she is unable to view it from Hotmail.  It
acts like it is working, and then presents an error.

However, while I was looking at it, I was able to forward it to my
address (non-Hotmail), and we were then able to view it.  I am wondering
that, since Hotmail is a MS product, was it possible that it, or WMP, were
displaying these errors in an attempt to try to get people to upgrade to
WinXP and/or WMP 10.

On a partially-related note, I did run a Windows Update, which downloaded
some critical updates to Windows, IE, and WMP.  After doing so, the sound
on the machine quit working.  When a sounds starts to play, it "hangs"
and either will not allow other sounds to play from that point on, or
keeps playing until another sound "pushes" it out, and starts hanging on
its own.

Annoying to say the least.  I attempted to uninstall the WMP update, but
it was not listed as uninstallable.  Since the sound was working fine
before, I am leaning more towards it being a software problem than a
hardware problem (although I have seen hardware problems cause this
scenario before).

Any ideas on that one?

Mike
---
 * SLMR 2.1a * If she won't live forever, why give a diamond?


--- GTMail 1.26