Forums mIRC Help Mirc sounds wont play on Windows 7

Hi all, so here is my problem....

I moved my mIRC from Windows XP to Windows 7,
and now mIRC doesnt play the sounds which you can set under mIRC Options:

If I select a file and press the Play button mIRC freezes...
I have to wait like for 30-50 seconds and then it continues to run, however it does not play any sound.
The same thing happens if I try to trigger the sound with /splay command.

Anyone else has this problem?!?

Is it because my Windows 7 is x64/64bit while my Windows XP was x86/32bit?
Does this problem appear because of Windows or because of mIRC?

First I thought that my installed mIRC version (v6.2) is the reason for this,
so I installed the lastest one (v6.35), but it still shows the exact same behaviour as described above.

Any help or workarounds to solve this issue are highly appreciated.

A possible workaround to play the sounds could be by opening and playing the sounds through an external app
like WinAMP or VLC-MediaPlayer. But as I lack of knowledge about such things and their coding, I hope that maybe someone of you can help with a little alias.

Many Thanks in advance.

Demarko,

Prior to migrating to Windows 7 from Windows XP did you run the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor?
To determine if your current computer configuration will be compatible with Windows 7 please go to the following link: http://tinyurl.com/no4xb7

Another resource to verify compatibility is available at the Microsoft Windows 7 Compatibility Center located at the following link: http://bit.ly/1gW6Ns

Jessica
Microsoft Windows Client Team

Nah, I wont click those links, as they look like some malware links Im used to get in Spam Emails
Why not posting direct link to the Microsoft site if you are affilated with that company?


Anyway,

It's a new PC with Windows 7 pre-installed on it. So, yeah the system/hardware is Windows 7 compatible.
Sounds and Music are playing, its just that mIRC wont play any sounds as described in my first posting above.

Since I'm not at home, I won't click them to check out where they lead, but just as a note, tinyurl.com and bit.ly are both url shortener sites. They are getting to be used more and more often so that a long link (M$'s site links are often quite long as an example) can be posted without taking much space. You'll see the same kinds of links on many Facebook app posts, as another example.

Personally, though, I'd prefer people post a link using the url tags and just labeling it something short so that a mouseover of the link will show the site address.

Just to check regarding your sounds... do you have sound enabled in mIRC's options?

As far as sounds in Windows 7, I know they work fine in 32bit on my system and I know people using 64bit who have sounds. So it's likely some configuration there or driver issue that's causing problems.

Yes! I did not change any settings while moving mirc from the old winxp system to the new windows 7 one.

Sorry, I missed that. To maybe help narrow it down... your example mentions a WAV file. Does this happen to all types of sounds mIRC can play (such as mp3 and midi)? Or just WAV?

I have no .midi to test it with, but surprisingly there is no problem with playing .mp3 files.
Tested with two differnt .mp3 files without problems; be it in the sound options dialog when I press the Play button or via /splay command.

Why didnt I thought of that? THANKS, Riamus2.

But still I dont understand why it wont play the .wav files. They are valid WAV files and they play in WMP, WinAMP, etc.

I guess a (temp) solution would be to convert them into .mp3 format. If I only knew how to do so.

I'm sure there's a WAV to MP3 converter out there. Still, you shouldn't have to convert it. I use Invision, which uses WAV files and it works fine in Win7 32bit. I don't know if they play in 64bit, though. At least this helps to narrow down what might be the cause of the problem. Unfortunately, I don't know what the cause might be.

try cdex

Im now very certain that the problem has sth to do with the 64bit version of windows 7.
Be it the old .wav files or be it mIRC having problem playing them, I dont know.

Anyway, if anyone has the same problem; here is how I solved it:
I converted my files from .wav into .mp3 using winLAME (http://winlame.sourceforge.net).
Converting was very easy.

Once again, Thanks!

Windows 7 64Bit Tests:
//var %lag = $ticks , %sound = c:\windows\media\chimes.wav | splay %sound | echo -a * Lag: $calc($ticks - %lag)

returns: * Lag: 31

//var %lag = $ticks , %sound = c:\windows\media\flourish.mid | splay %sound | echo -a * Lag: $calc($ticks - %lag)

returns: * Lag: 3593

//var %lag = $ticks , %sound = D:\mIRC\Nanase Aikawa - Do It.mp3 | splay %sound | echo -a * Lag: $calc($ticks - %lag)

returns: * Lag: 31

For me, they all work, but midi seems to take a LONG time to start, causing mIRC to lock up until the sound eventually starts playing. every midi takes over 3 seconds to start playing.

On a further note, friends who also have w7 have the same issue but the lag seems to vary, some have approximately 1sec lag to play a midi, but also can play wav/mp3. not sure why you can't play a wav. This might be worth mensioning in the bugs section.