7:27 PM November 10, 2006

These problems happened over the last couple of days.

Clicked on an ad to watch a video only to be told I didn't have the right codec. I of course, regrettably clicked on the link to download the codec. It downloaded a small file that I double-clicked on to begin the installation of the so-called codec.

It turned out to be one of those web-installers, you know the kind, it requires you to be online to download and install the real program. Anyway the real program in this case turned out to be a bunch of spyware and adware plus I got an anti-virus program installed without my approval called Virus buster or something like that.

I don't trust virus and adware busting programs that act like the programs they are supposed to get rid of, that is, installing and setting up on my computer WITHOUT MY CONSENT.

I saw the shortcut on my desktop and at first thought it was just a shortcut to a website to buy the product. I immediatly went to the add/remove programs in the control panel and got rid of the crap.

The site in question is www.ivideocedec.com. Treat this site like you'll get the plague if you go there. And for the record I am not sure if there was any codec to begin with.

Had Windows Live Messenger version 8.0.0792.00 on one of my computers and decided to update to version 8.0.0812.00, it seemed to work, but I kept getting an error message when starting up.

A window would open that had in the title bar the wording:
msnmsgr.ex - Unable To Locate Component .

The error message inside the box was the following:
This application has failed to start because MSOERT2.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem .

Reinstalling, I don't think so.

Experience tells me reinstalling a program that dont work the first time, 9 times out of 10, it will not work no matter how many times you reinstall it (of course, thats just me).

Instead I went online to search for info on the file MSOERT2.DLL at www.processlibrary.com and found out it was a Microsoft Outlook Express RT Lib file'. Then I went to www.dlldump.com and searched to find a copy of the file to download after discovering it was missing from my computer, downloaded and copied it to the c:\Windows\System32 folder (I wasn't exactly sure where it was supposed to go so I also copied it to the C:\Windows\system folder as well.)

Error message don't come up anymore. Just a note - MSN still worked without this file.

I have WinXP Home Edition and was using the Windows Media Player For some reason it just stopped working so I decided to use it as a excuse to upgrade to version 10. Did so, still didn't work. I then started getting an error message from it.

The file wmp.dll has a version number of 10.0.0.3646 where 10.0.0.3802 was expected. Windows Media Player is not installed properly and must be reinstalled. Do you want to install the player from the Microsoft Web Site? Yes No

My answer was no, again I went online looking for the file mentioned. Found and downloaed a version of wmp.dll, but it still had the wrong version number. I decided to check to see if the file was even on my computer, amazingly, I found the exact file that I was looking for on my own computer, twice actually.

It was in a folder called C:\WINDOWS\RegisteredPackages\{DD90D410-1823-43EB-9A16-A2331BF08799}.

It was also in a folder, C:\Program Files\SatelliteTVforPC, the other reason I upgraded my system, more about it later.

Anyway, I just copied the right version of the wmp.dll from C:\WINDOWS\RegisteredPackages\{DD90D410-1823-43EB-9A16-A2331BF08799} to the C:\WINDOWS\system32 folder, overwrote the one that was there and problem solved.

Why Windows did not install the proper files to begin with is beyond my understanding.

This leads to a brief talk about Internet TV, some of the people who sell thes programs promise, TV comparible to Cable and even Satellite. Don't be fooled by thes pie-in-the-sky promises. I have fooled around with a number of these programs and they leave a lot to be desired.

Between the poor connection problems with stations (a term in this case I use very losely), poor video quality, poor channel choices, poor programming options...stop me anytime, I haven't come across any program yet worth paying for.

The Cable and Satellite companies, have nothing to fear. The only program that comes remotely close is actually a FREE program called TVUPlayer from www.viidoo.com . I would like to point out that I have this program on two different computers and it seems to work on one better than the other even though the computers are very similar in compacity. Download and give it a try. If you come across any more ads for internet tv, try any demo they have first before dishing out your hard earned money.