Why Can't WinAMP Play Shoutcast Streams on Win XP?
 

Running any version between 1.92 and 5.03a on XP, I can't get Shoutcast streams to launch. I have WinAMP installed on PCs with Win 2K, Windows ME and Windows 98 and those can play Shoutcast streams. Just installed 5.03a on a brand new Win XP machine and it too cannot play a SHoutcast stream. The common symptom is that Listen[1] appears in the display, but it never spools up.

What is different about XP that prevents Shoutcast broadcasts from being received? Perhaps WinAMP installs differently on XP than on ME, 2K or 98? How can I fix this?

Empty your internet cache

That didn't work. Anyway, it's a new installation of XP, so there is nothing in the cache yet.

Well, it's nothing to do with WinXP, because that's the same OS that me and many others here are using, and we don't experience this problem.

1. Make sure you've set the correct internet connection type in:
Winamp > Prefs > General Preferences

2. Make sure your firewall is configured to allow Winamp.exe full internet access.

3. Make sure the .PLS playlist extension is correctly associated with Winamp.

Winamp > Prefs > File Types:
PLS should be selected in the Extension list.

Windows > Control Panel > Folder Options > File Types tab:
PLS > Advanced
Default Action: Play in Winamp > Edit:
App used command line = "c:\program files\winamp\winamp.exe" "%1"

Just stepped through those settings... Play in WinAMP is in bold, the Advanced page shows the exact same command line as above quoted. I also noted "&Play in Winamp" as the action.
Curiously, if I keep clicking on the link to play, after about 30 clicks, the stream suddenly spooled up and started to play. But if I shut the PC down and reboot, WinAMP won't play the link again. It seems like clicking the link 30-40 times gets it 'unstuck' and it works repeatably until I shut down Windows XP and reboot. Then the problem begins all over again.

Win XP's firewall is disabled.

As mentioned, this does not happen on our Windows 2000 PCs, nor on the Windows ME laptop nor a Windows 98 PC that we also have.
We have XP also on another desktop machine that refuses to play. I clicked 115 times on the link and it made a playlist of 115 "Listen[1]" entries. However, I noted that entries 33, 48, & 53 had IP addresses next to them. The rest did not. If I clicked on one of the entries with the IP address, WinAMP will play the stream. But it should not be this difficult to listen to internet streams. On WIndows 2000, I just have to click only once on a link and it streams right away. THis is not the case on every Win XP machine we have WinAMP installed on.
THere must be something else going on.

Is RealPlayer installed? Or any other software players (Musicmatch, etc)?

How to Unassociate RP8 from Streaming Playlists & Make Winamp the Default Instead
Mugged by RealPlayer
Help! - RealPlayer is still screwing me
RealPlayer has converted PLS and M3U Playlists to .XPL format - forum search


Apart from that, post a HiJackThis log.

Thank you for the comprehensive list of links. In the first link was the answer.

The following entry was MISSING from the registry:

audio/pls : Extension = .pls

I manually created a new key, edited it to contain the above, and now it works for the laptop machine with XP, but unfortunately, applying that reg entry to the desktop XP machine did not affect the problem there. Further exploration revealed that the SCPLS key was missing from the desktop machine. Weird. Anyway, I added it to this machine and now it streams. Why these keys were missing is curious.
Oddly enough, there is a VAIO XP machine at the radio station where I work that has RealPlayer on it and WinAMP, and WinAMP doesn't have any trouble playing a stream. And that machine is loaded with junk, antivirus, ZoneAlarm, etc, and it still works. My clean XP desktop machine however, doesn't.

It depends on whether you installed RealPlayer or Musicmatch (or similar) and told it to become the default player for all supported filetypes. If you uncheck that option, then it doesn't modify any existing HKCR registry settings... and/or also shouldn't delete said keys on uninstall.

However, if you checkmark "associate with playlist files (pls, m3u)" in the Winamp installer, then afaik this should've fixed the problem...?

I rebooted both XP computers and the problem is back on BOTH of them.

I can reboot my Win 98, Win 2000 computers and WinAMP does not fail to play streams. But on XP, WinAMP gets broken after shutting down and rebooting. I have two XP machines with SP1 installed. One is XP Home the other is XP Pro and neither one can play streams as of now. The registry hack above was only a temporary fix. Perhaps a permanent fix is just to switch to Windows 2000 and leave it at that. I'm getting sick of XP undoing all my fixes and tweaks.

After inspecting my registry, I find the tweaks are still there--but WinAMP is displaying only "1. Listen[1]" and not playing the stream again. On BOTH PCs, no less. Looks like the problem goes deeper than this.

RealPlayer installations are treated with EXTREME care here. I disabled all of RP's modifications on install, allowing it to play ONLY ram and rm files ONLY. I did not allow it to modify any other associations.

All of my Win 98 and Win 2000 machines also have RealPlayer, and WinAMP and these problems have never cropped up. The defining difference is the presence of XP. If OS is not XP, then no problem. If XP is the OS then WinAMP doesn't stream.