windows media not working?

[speeddude2000]

hey i have xp home and sp1 installed. when i ran media player a few days ago, it came up with an error:

"The audio codec identified by the format tag 55 is required to play this file. To determine if this codec is available to download from the Web, click Web Help."

then i thought it was a prob with my sound cards or something. so i ran real player, and it worked. i ran media again, and no luck. so i just installed the xp media 10 beta, and i still get the same error. any suggestions?

[Gizmo]

Would updating the media player help? Did you see the Web help it suggested in the error message?

[speeddude2000]

well, i already updated it. to version 10, and the website was useless.

[Pentium-ant]

Just found this on Microsofts help page seems to be relevent have you tried this?

I can't play my music because Windows Media Player says I need tag 55. Can you help me get this tag?

Format tags, such as tag 55, are used by the Player to identify which decoder to use to play back your content. If you get the following error message, "The audio codec identified by the format tag 55 is required to play this file", then the MP3 decoder on your computer has become corrupted or damaged in some way, and needs to be replaced. To fix this problem on a computer running Windows XP and Windows Media Player 9 Series:

From the Start menu, click Search.

Under What do you want to search for? click All files and folders.

Under All or part of the file name, type l3codeca.acm.

Click Search.

When the results are displayed, right-click the file and then click Rename. Rename the file l3codeca.bak.

Open Windows Media Player.

From the Help menu, click Check for Updates. An up-to-date version of l3codeca.acm will be installed on your computer.

[speeddude2000]

thanks ill try that