Necrotic Obsession

I've been using Winamp for years as my preferred music player, and have never had any problems with it until recently.

Two things that it's been doing that I've caught so far, is one, when I try to play music tracks on it, it runs through them in seconds, moving on to the next track, no audio or anything..
I've tried with a pile of mp3's, and no, I haven't moved the files to some other location on my system after adding them or anything like that.

And two, I can't listen to any Shoutcast stations with it. I'm not getting messages that the server is full, and I tried with about 20 different stations. I'm getting a "[sorry cannot write streams to disk]" message.

Does anyone know what is going on with it? I've never run into problems with it before, so I don't know what is up with it.

Oh, and yes, I know there are many other alternatives out there, I just would like to know what is going on with my Winamp and if I can fix it. It's possible I'm being a dolt and am missing something entirely basic, but like I said, I've never had any issues with it before.

At first I thought maybe it was some bug with the version I had, so I upgraded to the most recent release, but that did not fix the problem(s).

Suggestions? Help? Bueller?

Yeah, I always hated Windows Media Player and still do, so I was hoping someone had an answer here, but since this section is pretty inactive, I'll just check out some tech support forums.

Thanks anyway though.

Okay, fixed. It was the output plug in. I don't know how it got changed, but it had. Weirdness.

I hate WMP because I find it bloated, don't like the interface or the options (or lack thereof).

As for the output, I changed it in preferences, from Disk Writer to Directsound Output. I don't even know how it got changed to Disk Writer in the first place.

I never understood what people hate about WMP so much. It's simple to use, and takes up far less resource than that shit gobbler Itunes. I'm not the kind of person that relies on playlists and context searches to generate my listening queue. I know exactly where my files are and I'd rather just use an explorer window to drag them into the now playing list. I like some of the add ons Winamp has, but the interface is so cluttered and annoying no matter what skin you use.

Well I'd definitely prefer WMP to itunes, sure. I still prefer Winamp to WMP though. As for Winamp skins, I always use the classic interface. It's just a matter of personal preference I guess.

I don't think I've ever heard anyone say their preferred media player is Real Player though.

Maybe if it were 1996.

"OMG, I can listen to a live concert in REAL TIME! They call it: STREEAMING!"

"WOW! It kind of sounds like shit though"

"Oh...that's just my 28k modem. My modem at home can play the stream at 48K! The song sounds much less like a bag of glassware falling down a fire escape"

Not to mention the joy of bloat and the "message center". After installing Real Player, you end up having to immediately go into preferences and disable a bunch of things to avoid all kinds of extra nonsense running on start up, in the background, and popping up on your screen.