Problems Playing Videos with Windows Media Player

Watching movies and recorded TV programs on your PC is very easy and common these days. Not only easy, also convenient, so if problems with playing video occur this can be very frustrating. If you have a problem with the video becoming sluggish, intermittent, or your Windows media player stops responding altogether, you might have a problem with the video buffering.

Windows media player uses a Media Index or video cache to store parts of the video file being played. This caching concept is used to speed up the playing of video. A nice concept in itself, but problems with the cache can occur that cause video clips to be cut short and video playing to be problematic. Especially if you stopped watching a video or online recording, erratic behavior is possible the next time you try to watch the same video clip.

The solution in many cases is to simply clear the video cache of Windows media player.

The solution in many cases is to simply clear the video cache of Windows media player.

For Windows XP clear the folder:

\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Media Index

For Windows Vista clear the folder:

\Users\All Users\Microsoft\Media Index

Or

\ProgramData\Microsoft\Media Index

Delete files with the extension .db to clear the cache. After clearing the Media Index folder, try playing the video clip again. There should no longer be problems with the video playing. Windows media player will simply recreate a cache for the video clip.