as i went into device manager to disable one of the cards, i noticed that the microsoft streaming proxy device had an exclamation mark and a code 19, telling me that the registry was wiped. and, that jogged my memory.

one of the reasons that i'm sticking with xp is that it's winlited. rather dramatically. the iso is...well, it's pretty big because it has install scripts and added programs. but, if it was just the winlited iso it would be around 50 mb. it's the size of one of those mini-linux distros. and it's cut down just as much. on top of that dramatic haircut, i run an install script that deletes hundreds of windows files and wipes out half the registry. it's pretty comprehensive. mine is the only non-network computer i've ever seen where trying to hit the internet from windows explorer actually seriously fails.

i can't know what caused the problem initially because i've wiped it down. it may have very well been the codec install - or perhaps the uninstall. but, i do know that i've seen this problem with the streaming device before, and i know that the reason it's telling me it's not in the registry is because it's not in the registry - the install script wiped it. the script is almost ten years old. i was mixing in cool edit via cut and paste at the time. my sleuthing told me it was a windows media service. i've just never updated the script..

...because it's an easy fix - i take it out of my vanilla sp3 virtual machine that i keep around for these reasons and install via device manager. i've actually done this before, albeit not for this reason. i forgot to do it on the recent reinstall.

time will tell if that's actually what the problem was. but, i think it makes sense.

thanks.