The latest Winamp is garbage.

[plonq]

Giving it complicated commands - say, to play a song, or to skip to the next randomly causes the interface to freeze up for 30-40 seconds at a time.

It seems to affect my work computer more than my home system, so I don't know if I'm running an older version at home, or if it's a Win2K compatibility issue.  It's also possible that it's one of the plugins that I'm running here.  I have different ones running at home.  I'll try disabling them one at a time and see what happens.  <sigh>

Comments

[vichan.livejournal.com]

Okay, THAT'S bizarre. 'Cuz it runs fine on my computer, which tends to be a piece o' crap.

[plonq.livejournal.com]

Now that I give it more thought, I'm pretty sure that it doesn't lock up like this on my home computer. I've tried disabling the plugins and it still freezes up. I have a hunch that it may be a network issue. Our corporate firewall blocks most ports, and I have a feeling that the lockup happens when it tries to "call home" through one of the blocked ports.

That might just be my paranoia showing through, though. I like the way the program works for the most part, but I've never fully trusted it since AOL bought them out a couple of years back.

[gedrean.livejournal.com]

Easy way to fix that. Install zone alarm and watch for traffic from Winamp.

Or you could run an ipsniffer on outbound only

[plonq.livejournal.com]

Neither of those are really an option at work, but I might toy around with an IP sniffer at home because I'm curious now.

I used to run ZAP at home, but it conflicted with the Trend internet suite and I had to un-install it. I miss some of the features of ZAP - specifically it's monitoring of outgoing connections - but there are also a lot of things in the Trend software that I like. Ah well, that's what trade-offs are all about.

[plonq.livejournal.com]

Hmph. I clicked on the wrong icon. THIS is the one that I mean't to use in that post.

[halioffirpine.livejournal.com]

iTunes, iTunes, iTunes. (http://www.apple.com/itunes)

'nuff said. ;)

(Yes, it can play Winblows Media, YES, it plays ogg vorbis. I don't know what OS you need to run in order to get it, though.)

Pax,
Hali
--
http://www.avians.net/hali
http://www.matthewebel.com

[plonq.livejournal.com]

I used iTunes for awhile at home, and at work. I'll probably continue to use Winamp at home because it supports some pretty cool DirectX plugins that I like, but I may reinstall it here.

The only down side is that the last time I installed it here, it insisted on stealing some critical file associations, which in turn caused some of my critical web-based applications to blow up. I was... miffed. I'd specifically told it NOT to associate with those file types during installation, and even unchecked them again in the configs, but it was adamant.

Maybe they've fixed it in later versions. If not, well, I've become an old hand at hacking the registry. And with the way that Winamp is starting to piss me off here, hacking the registry sounds like the lesser of two evils.

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

I have itunes on the main computer. Not on the laptops though because they are still running win98 and Itunes doesn't run under it.

iTunes follow-up

[plonq.livejournal.com]

I have officially rejoined the iTunes cult. Installation went much smoother this time, and it's not interfering with any of my web apps now.

Best of all it's not freezing up every time I select a new song!

That flushing sound you hear is Winamp being purged from this machine.

Re: iTunes follow-up

[halioffirpine.livejournal.com]

Welcome to the family. :) Eventually, you'll figure out just how much easier most Apple products are to deal with on a daily basis, but this is a good first step. ;)

Pax,
Hali
--
http://www.avians.net/hali
http://www.matthewebel.com

Re: iTunes follow-up

[furahi.livejournal.com]

Careful if you ever upgrade it, a friend of mine just lost his whole music collection because he upgraded it and iTunes thought it cool to delete his songs in the process

[furahi.livejournal.com]

In my experience <puffs like an owl> that kind of freezes are almost always the media's fault.
Maybe there are read errors in your hard drive, or network if you're pulling those files from somewhere; that's almost always the case when that happens to me, either with winamp or xmms (which I use a lot more because I hardly ever go to windows)

[plonq.livejournal.com]

True, I've encountered those lovely freeze-ups when there's a read error on the CD, but in those cases the program itself would simply lock up. The only work-around I could find was to eject the CD so that the program would come out of its torpor and generate an error message.

In this case the program kept playing just fine, but the interface would stop responding for 30-40 seconds (though it would buffer any mouse presses during that time). I'm pretty sure that it's not a media error because I'm playing the songs directly off a JumpDrive, and neither Windows Media Player or iTunes has a problem with it.