Videos on MSIE home page that won't play

Hi:

I have MSIE 6.0.

I tried to email MSNBC about this question but the "contact us" link was only for those who subscribe to MSN ISP

Does anyone have SPECIFIC knowledege as to WHY these videos often won't play. Repeated clicks on the link do not help. I have broadband; my computer is working just fine. YET SOMETIMES THEY PLAY BEAUTIFULLY. If they don't, I get the messaage: "This page cannot be displayed."

I mean, what bugs me (and this situation has been this way for months) is WHY do they even bother to put the links on line if they cannot be accessed. The links are marked "Nightly News", "Today" and "MSNBC-TV"

It's frustrating when I want to hear/see the videos.

John

IE 6 uses your WMP. Try updating your WMP to 9, and download the codec package.
Also if you get page not found that could be a lot of reasons. Bloacked by a proxy, the queue might be full, or too many users connected at a given time. Have you tried same video link at different times??

David Dehcbad25 and whoever else reads this follow-up:

Thanks for your input. I just now (it's only 20 minutes since my initial post) discovered that my pop-up ad blocker was malfunctioning. The way it works normally is that when I want to play such a video, I must click on the link button while I simultaneously hold "shift" or "the ctrl key down. That has always worked in the past. I know this was the problem because when I disabled my ad blocker, the videos played just fine.

John

I also just discovered that pressing "shift" simultaneously with clicking on the link causes the video not to play BUT that it DOES play if I depress "ctrl" while clicking on the link.

Wish I had been told me, but perhaps it's a quirk of my computer.

John

What pop-up blocker program are you using?

It's called Panicware Pop-up stopper. It was free from www.panicware.com. It is V 2.9. In its aggressive mode (which I use) it is 99% effective--and a great benefit to have.

John

HUmm, I haven't chek this out (short on time) but I think Pop-up Stoper has spyware. I remember I though it was funny a pop up stoper to have spyware :p

David: I had this program: Spybot. I ran it. It found a bunch of programs it classified as spyware; Pop-up stopper was not among them.

John

Well at least you know how to view the movies, did it only happen on the MSIE website, or for other movies on other websites ??

I bet you are glad though that it works - to some extent.

Yes, it has only happened on the MSIE site. I rarely view movies on other websites, or when I do, they end up using Windows Media Player or Quicktime where Java is not involved. So I can't wholly answer your question.

Yes, I am glad it works, because I really like the MSIE-Today-NBC Nightly News info I get.

John

to Lynchk and FG:

Hi!. Forgot to say that those little red cars are CUTE. It'd be way cool if the one behind could crash into the one in front (Pouf!!) and the one in front explode and vanish.

What program did you use to create that?

John