Can't play Yahoo! movie trailers



Hi all;

I'm totally stumped by this problem and I'm hoping someone here might
have some insight.

I have a Dell Inpiron 8600 with Windows XP Home.

Whether I use Netscape 7.2, 8 or Mozilla or IE I cannot get Yahoo movie
trailers to play.

It pops up the separate window and then I get the "Initializing... 90%"
and then... nothing!

I can play videos from other sites.

I've uninstalled and installed both QT 7 and Win Media Player 10... but
no go.

I've tried with and without my firewall.

I have used Yahoo!'s configuration page to choose either Quicktime or
RealPlayer and a slower conncection speed... and still no luck.

My daughter's computer with Windows XP Home and on the same wifi
connection CAN play those same trailers. And BOTH computers can play
other videos from other sites.

The G-Spot Codec lister says I have the WMV codecs. But it doesn't ask
for codecs and it plays wmv files directly.

I keep my computer lean and clean and regularly check for viruses,
spyware etc. I use Microsoft's off the shelf Window's firewall. (but,
again, I've tried without the firewall as well)

No error messages for a long wait.... sometimes there is just a white
screen with "Initializing... [#]%" as in NS 7.2 or Mozilla. Sometimes
there is the normal purple with white text screen as in IE 6.

BUT... after a couple of minutes of inactivity (meaning that the little
icon in the system tray that shows wifi activity shows none past the
first couple of seconds) this alert box pops up: "Windows Media Player
cannot play the file because a network error occurred. The server might
not be available. Verify that you are connected to the network and that
your proxy settings are correct. Click the Play button to try to
reconnect to this stream. [button = "okay"]"

I can play videos from other sites where the link references a video
file directly. But the yahoo movie trailers don't do that. The link
references a javascript script not the wmv directly. I DO have
Javascript enabled in all browsers.

I've uninstalled and reinstalled Windows Media Player and Quicktime
with no success. I've also reinstalled the WMV codecs separately as
well. I've reinstalled Netscape 8 (thought not the other browsers) with
no success.

I've set up the browsers to download and play WMVs without streaming as
well but because it is pushed via javascript it won't do that.

I've switched download speeds in yahoo to slower speeds also with no
success.

Because of the alert box above I wondered if for some reason that the
wifi router (my service is supplied by my landlord who is an ISP
provider) was treating my computer differently for some reason than my
daughter's computer. I had made sure that no other protocols except
TCP/IP were selected on my machine which is the same as my daughter's.
(my landlord can't see anything on his end that could cause it to
discriminate between the two computers)

I'm stumped!

I'm hoping your brilliant computer brains can solve this.

Thanks.

Christopher

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