RealOne/WinAMP Refuse to Stream after Restarting
 

I installed Adobe Premiere 6.5 on my Sony GRX560 notebook the other day and
now when I click on web sites with streaming media, neither WinAMP 3 nor
RealOne Player will play the streams. RealOne says the link is outdated, but
if I play that link on a desktop PC, it plays fine. WinAMP will start up
when I click a Shoutcast link, but will then just sit there doing nothing.

Now here's where it gets strange: If I go to the Shoutcast web site and
click on a stream from their page, WinAMP will play the stream. Not only
that, but RealOne Player will now connect and play the stream on the web
site that was 'missing or outdated' a few minutes earlier. If I reboot the
laptop, the same cycle starts again where Real and WinAMP refuse to stream
when a streamcast is clicked upon.

These problems occured after the installation of Premiere 6.5, but I don't
see why that would cause these two programs to suddenly need to go the the
Shoutcast site in order to 'kickstart' their streaming capabilities.

Any ideas as to what specifically is causing this? Wrong version of directX,
or a replaced DLL file somewhere? Why does it start working after playing a
stream from shoutcast? Why does playing a stream in WinAMP suddenly give
Real player the ability to play streams again? This is too weird!

I should mention that the laptop is running XP Home edition.

Also, I found out that just closing the web browser and restarting it causes streaming to fail again until I visit the shoutcast site first. Shoutcast seems to provide some initialization that both WinAMP and RealONe player need in order to stream. If I simply start the browser and then try to click on a stream link, I get an error in Real player to the effectg 'cannot find such and such file in C:\windows\somepath...\temp' and playback fails. WinAMP offers even less of a clue--it just sits there displaying the name of the 'song' as Winamp 3.0 in the title window and is silent.

That was one of the first things I tried doing. It did not correct the problem however.

Strangely enough, I also installed Premiere 6.5 on a desktop machine that has IE 5.5 and WinAMP 2.8 and am not experiencing any problems of this nature with starting streams off the web.

The issue seems limited to my laptop PC with XP and IE 6.0.

I have cleared the browser cache, but the problem persists. It's very annoying to first have to kickstart streaming by going to a certain web site first, before I can listen to streams on other sites. Short of reinstalling the master discs for my laptop, I am running out of ideas for getting streaming working the way it used to.

Does WinXP have a System File Checker utility (like SFC.EXE in Win98) ?
Looks like Adobe's replaced some key system file(s) with possibly older or incompatible versions, or maybe it's edited some crucial registry key(s).

Also, not sure if this feature is in WinXP either, but usually you can go to:
Add/Remove Programs CP -> Microsoft Internet Explorer -> Add/Remove -> Repair IE

To be honest, I'm not 100% sure what the problem is.
Sorry I can't offer any more advice than this . . . :(

Actually, reading your first post again, I'm a little confused as to what method you're using to open the streams which won't work. You say it works ok directly from the Shoutcast site, but could you please explain what it is which isn't working. Is it saved Winamp bookmarks, or previously played playlist entries which are still in your playlist, but possibly outdated?
(Some stations change the server/port on a regular basis, so the old url won't work and you need to tune into the new one instead)

Oh, and never rule RealOne out of the equation.
There's a good chance that this might be to blame and not Adobe Premier.
If it's running, disable stupid Real Start Center in systray
and make sure RealSlayer isn't associated with any streaming playlist formats (pls, m3u) and that Winamp is!

The method I was using was simply to click on a link on the web page offering the stream. This problem affected both WinAMP and RealONe players.

But today, after transporting my laptop to and from work last night, I fired it up at my home office and now suddenly everything is working normally again. I don't get it. For a whole week it was not working, now suddenly and without apparent cause, it is working, both WinAMP and Real. I don't get it. The only think different is that the PC was off for almost 2 hours during the drive last night.