[Rav]

Hi all

I run Windows ME and Norton Internet Security 2005 on my laptop. I use Windows Media Player 9. The NIS 2005 has been a recent purchase.

When I go to internet websites, such as news and financial reporting sites, which have streaming video, I cannot access the same. I get stuck on the "connecting to media" stage and do not get onto the buffering stage at all. Normally, as many will know, buffering will get to 100% and the video will play.

I have checked the proxy / network settings in Media Player and they are set as recommended. I have downloaded and installed a patch from Microsoft's website (I was led there by Symantec) but this did not help. I spent an hour on the phone with Symantec telephone support and they tried a number of things, such as deleting Media Player from the Program Control list in NIS 2005 and re-introducing it after a scan for internet programmes using NIS 2005 - no help. I should say that when I disabled NIS completely I was able to watch the streaming video.

One thing that Symantec telephone support did, which confirms to me that there is a firewall / proxy / port issue at hand here, is that they told me to remove Port 80 from the list of filtered ports in NIS: I was then able to access streaming video on the sites. However, on re-introducing Port 80 the problem returned. I believe this Port 80 to be important so do not want to leave it off permanently - is this so? Ultimately, Symantec abandoned me by saying that I should un-install and re-install NIS 2005 and that this would solve the problem.

I feel that this will not help and have not done this re-installation. I believe this problem to be related to configuration of the firewall / rules / proxies / ports to allow Media Player 9 to access the web sites.

Please, please help, anyone! This problem is driving me mad...I know it to be a common problem from the search results in Google, although none of these resuts seem to get to the bottom of fixing the problem.

Thanks!

Ravi

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Sorry, I am unsure of your problem, and on Port 80. And it certainly is strange since I also have NIS 2005 and I never have had a problem with streaming video. But perhaps this is due to that I have Windows Media player 10, not 9. Could you try upgrading and see if that works for you? The site for the download is here:
http://www.microsoft...ia/default.aspx

If this does not work, could you just get another media player? I like WinAmp better than Windows Media anyway, and set it as your default video player. All streaming video should play from there. But I'd see the first way out if you don't want another program.

[lionelhutz5]

Sorry, I am unsure of your problem, and on Port 80. And it certainly is strange since I also have NIS 2005 and I never have had a problem with streaming video. But perhaps this is due to that I have Windows Media player 10, not 9. Could you try upgrading and see if that works for you? The site for the download is here:
http://www.microsoft...ia/default.aspx

If this does not work, could you just get another media player? I like WinAmp better than Windows Media anyway, and set it as your default video player. All streaming video should play from there. But I'd see the first way out if you don't want another program.

[Rav]

Hi Lionel

Thanks for getting back to me. I am running Win ME on my laptop and, as such, cannot move up to Media Player 10...I could have, had I been running Win XP.

I installed Real Player 10 and encountered the same problem. Definitely a port / proxy / protocol issue. I have to opt for these more traditional media players because I am streaming news video off websites like BT Yahoo and the CBOE (Chicago Board of Options Exchange) and these sites are tending to look for conventional media players, like Media Player and Real Player, to speak to. At least, I think this is the case.

I think this is a case of NIS 2005 being somewhat over-zealous in stopping the streaming and Win ME not being as proactive as XP (2 different animals, really) in helping solve the problem. The other issue is that my laptop is not all that powerful (PIII 850Mhz, 256 RAM) and NIS tends to run quite slowly on it. I find the program control queries from NIS take an awfully long time to pop up.

Anyway, if you have any more ideas I'd be grateful.

Ravi

[lionelhutz5]

I do not know about more ideas for streaming video directly, but there is a program that allows you to download streaming video. This way, (although it may take a little longer) you can still watch the video. There are several programs out there, but I think that HiDownlaod works the best. But since there is a limit on usage (30 days) you can find a different program. But again, see how you like the one in the trial period and then decide if you would like to keep downloading the streaming files. HiDownload can be found here:

http://hidownload.com/

Peace,
Jared