Hi,

Hoping someone here may be able to help.

Just randomly last night I noticed that all the media players i have on the PC (Windows Media Player, Nero, RealPlayer etc) have some problem. They all play sound of a video but the picture is all black.

However online videos such as youtube etc work fine, so it cant be a flash player issue as far as i know.

I checked control panel on PC to try and find out if anything suddenly changed itself on settings, because i didnt update / change anything in 24 hours. It was all fine the day before.

Then i looked online and found various forums where people experienced similar thing, not recently but some years ago. However the suggestions looked complicated and involved doing some wierd things that didnt fix the problem, but brought but some video with really crappy quality making it worse. So i decided not to try any of that in case.

This would mean i cant edit videos in the movie maker either, just dump them in as they are (had to do some guess work last night with one by listening to the sound to figure out where to trim it etc). Not practical! Making trailer videos in this state will be impossible for future also.

Have any of you had this problem before with black screen on the media players but the sound is still there?

Any help would be really appreciated.   :'(

I dont use Windows movie maker (i agree it sucks KB1 ass), i have some other one i bought some years ago that i use to do pretty much every vid/trailer since 2007. No issues with that. Just that when i try to record/play vids on that it was doing the same as the media players.

So that and Windows media player are not the issue, it is any movie player i use on the PC. The built in one, Real Player, Quick time, Nero, the lot. Plays sound but no picture.

So im thinking it is a generic issue with the PC or some settings. Perhaps some of the self windows updates it done could have done it?

I found this forum which was similar issue someone had:

http://forums.techguy.org/multimedia/633262-windows-media-player-black-screen...

Zarkov wrote on 11/16/10 at 02:54:51:


Im considering it lol...

Any other suggestions? Perhaps this happened to someone before in the past...

Freakster wrote on 11/16/10 at 03:39:51:



Would that delete any programs or anything on the pc? How could i do it in a way that it wouldnt affect anything?

Freakster wrote on 11/16/10 at 04:13:42:



Ok i think il give that a go, just need to remember where on the pc the system restore is...

I did it once on my old pc back in 2004 or something. That one had a shit load of problems when it got old. This one is nearly 5 years.

AlexPenev wrote on 11/16/10 at 04:25:57:



I tried zsnes and that worked fine, i should probably test Microsoft Flight Sim X, thats a heavy graphics one on PC that i use from time to time but not too often. Il try that tonight and let you know also.

If there is a directX problem what should i do get a later version of it? And from where if yes?

Sami de la SMK wrote on 11/16/10 at 02:22:38:


Ignoring your issue completely, you should have VLC.  This program is super powerful and knocks the socks off those listed.

Penev has porn in all those files types, aswell as porn in .gif, .rar and .txt.

Only thing I can think of is to update/reinstall your video drivers. But I have a feeling they really aren't used for this type of thing.

Try playing a video in two players at once.  See if both are black or if 1 shows the video.

Ok i tried playing two different files in two different players.

Both same, sound is fine but no picture on either just black screen.


Then i tried opening the same file in both players, one was black, and the windows media one didnt show video either but had one of those moving colorful arty displays you get when listening to a music file..  if thats any better...

Still same problem then... What does the two player test prove in the investigation?

I did the Direct X test as Alex said, all of that passed correctly.

Then i used a CD i had from the graphics card update i had a month ago (which i didnt use yet) and installed the latest drivers.

Restarted PC... still the same, all the players have sound but dont display videos, black background still...


This is driving me mad... cant see any videos on any players, and cant edit videos properly on the movie maker that i use (cos it shows black also).

Btw, im using Windows XP,

Graphics Card is ATI Radeon HD 4300/4500 series

Built in player is part of Media Center which i believe the others work off.

But the ones i use/used are:
- Windows Media Player
- Real Player
- Quick Time
- Nero


Dunno what to do next?   :'(

I haven't read this whole thread from A to Z but did you try KMPlayer? It's the best media player that I know of.