Catastrophic failure (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8000FFFF) creating a playlist with axwindowsMediaPlayer

Question

I am using the axwindowsMediaPlayer object to show videos in a winform. In particular I want to play a playlist.

Everything works fine on my pc (win7) and used to work fine also in another pc with winXP (the pc of the final user).

But something happened a couple of days ago: on the XP PC I started to receive the following expcetion

Unhandled Exception:

Catastrophic failure (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8000FFFF (E_UNEXPECTED))

System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException

Stack Trace:
   at WMPLib.IWMPPlaylistCollection.newPlaylist(String bstrName)
   at BrinaS941.ScreenSaverVideo.ScreenSaver_Load(Object sender, EventArgs e)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Form.OnLoad(EventArgs e)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Form.OnCreateControl()
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.CreateControl(Boolean fIgnoreVisible)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.CreateControl()
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmShowWindow(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.ScrollableControl.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.ContainerControl.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Form.WmShowWindow(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Form.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m)
   at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)

Here the code that rises the exception:

private void ScreenSaverVideo_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    WMPLib.IWMPPlaylist playlist = VideoPlayer.playlistCollection.newPlaylist("myplaylist");
    WMPLib.IWMPMedia media;
    VideoPlayer.uiMode = "none";
    VideoPlayer.settings.volume = 10;
    [....]

The exception started to be risen while the application was working and now keep on having the same behavior.

I tried to reinstall Windows Media Player (11) on the XP machine, but nothing changed.

UPDATE:

I tried to comment the part of code related to the playlist (and use the method "URL" to set the video a want to play) and everything works fine. I am really puzzled...

Any help would be really appreciated. Thanks

(1) have you stepped through your code to see exactly the point of error? (2) have you checked that the 'screensavervideo' is compatible with XP? (3) have you tried a 'try-catch' caption? — jbutler483
(1) No, because on my dev pc the error doesn't happen. But I am pretty sure the line that throws the exception is "WMPLib.IWMPPlaylist playlist = VideoPlayer.playlistCollection.newPlaylist("myplaylist");" becuse I tried to move the line "VideoPlayer.uiMode = "none";" before and it is executed correctly. (2) Yes, since it worked correctly since 2 days ago (3) I inserted the code inside a try-catch: so my application doesn't crash, but the video are never played — muccix
Could the problem be linked to the fact that I am developing on a PC with Win7 and Media Player 12, while the application is running on Win XP with Media Player 11? — muccix
@colinsmith In the EventViewer I can not see anything useful. From what I understand the "WMPLib.IWMPPlaylistCollection" is an object contained in "Interop.WMPLib.dll" or in "AxInterop.WMPLib.dll" that I distribute with the application. Is there any reference in the dll of the pc that could be corrupted? — muccix

muccix muccix · Accepted Answer · 2014-08-07T10:19:27

I finally found the problem!

My fault was not to remove the playlist once used (with IWMPPlaylistCollection::remove method ). I realized that I had 2000 playlists ( myplaylist.wpl, myplaylist(1).wpl,..., myplaylist(1999).wpl) in my file system and probably there is a limit of 2000.

I don't know if it's a limit of the file system or of WMP.

Once deleted all the files everything started working again.

Thanks everyone for your help!

Catastrophic failure (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8000FFFF) creating a playlist with axwindowsMediaPlayer

1 Answers