The error shown in PlayerPal

When you start PlayerPal you may see the "An unexpected error has occured" message box.  With the following error text:

Process performance counter is disabled, so the requested operation cannot be performed.  at
System.Diagnostics.NtProcessManager.GetProcessInfos...
etc...

The cause of this error

When PlayerPal starts, it checks for other running PlayerPals.  This check uses a Windows feature to check the list of other running applications.  The error you have above is caused because Windows is unable to do this check.

This can be caused by any of the following reasons:

1. Performance information is not available to a non-admin account, which is not in the Performance Counter Users Group on Windows Server 2003. So the Process class could not get process performance information in this case.
2. Getting performance data from all the processes on the machine is pretty expensive. The operating system (OS) might load lots of DLLs and it might take seconds to complete. The floppy drive light will be on when the OS tries to find the index for some performance counter.
3. If the performance counter data was corrupted for any reason, the Process class could throw an exception while trying to convert some raw performance information into DateTime.
4. The Process class could not be used to get process information on machines without the process performance counter. Performance counters can be disabled in Windows. See the following link for details: http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/techinfo/reskit/en-us/default.asp?url=/windows2000/techinfo/ reskit/en-us/regentry/94214.asp

Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/aa569609.aspx#Question2

How to fix this

1. Make sure you are logged on using an account that is an administrator.
2. If you need to log in as a non-Admin, try adding your account to the Performance Counters User Group.
   
3. If the above did not work your perf counters may be disabled so...
   
4. Enable your performance counters if they are disabled.  Check this doc for information (and edit your registry at your own risk!) http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windows2000serv/reskit/regentry/94214.mspx?mfr=true
5. If the above did not work, your perf counters may be corrupt so...
6. I'm guessing you could try "repairing" Windows using your Windows install disk (do this at your own risk!)
7. Or, you could try what worked for one of my other customers (but I do not advocate) over here http://www.thescripts.com/forum/thread103512.html

Good luck!  And let me know what works for you! (you can leave comments below)

The error shown by PlayerPal

The system cannot find the path specified.

AND below this error the section titled "Server stack trace" starts like this:

Server stack trace:
at Microsoft.MediaPlayer.Interop.IWMPPlaylistArray.Item(Int32 lIndex)
at WMPPlugin.WmpLibrary.PlaylistNamed(String name)
at WMPPlugin.WmpLibrary.PlayerPalPlaylist...

How to work around this now

Then do the following to try and resolve the problem.

1. Open up your media player.
2. Goto your list of playlists.
3. Delete the playlist named "PlayerPal Playlist"
4. Try using PlayerPal again.

If this does not resolve your problem, email support.

When will this be fixed?

I'm not sure.  It only seems to happen very occasionally and at the moment I cannot reproduce it.

How to get PlayerPal to install after getting the error about no more endpoints being available from the endpoint mapper. It's fun!

This has been fixed in PlayerPal 4.2 service release 1 and later.  Download PlayerPal now.

The error shown by PlayerPal

Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

Server stack trace:
at iTunes.iTunesApplicationManager.MakeITunesBrowsePlaylist(String name, Boolean createIfMissing)

etc

When you try to add an album or tracks PlayerPal assumes (stupidly) that you main iTunes library is called Library.  If you have renamed your library you will get the error shown above.

 

How to work around this now

Rename your main iTunes library to Library.  This will only work if the error you get contains the MakeITunesBrowsePlaylist details described above.

 

When will this be fixed?

This has been fixed in PlayerPal 4.2 service release 1 and later.  Download PlayerPal now.

 

Be notified of new releases

Subscribe to the PlayerPal blog + Join the PlayerPal Google Group

This has been fixed in PlayerPal 4.2 service release 1 and later.  Download PlayerPal now.

The problem shown in PlayerPal

Problem: "Report error Culture name some user specific string here is not supported.Parameter name: name"

PlayerPal checks your browser for the culture (e.g. en-uk).  Some browsers reports cultures that PlayerPal does not like and the error above is shown.  This is only usually a problem for browsers on phones or other mobile devices.

 

How to work around this now

The only way to work around this is to change the culture setting of your browser.  See the answer section for how to set language preferences in a browser.  You will have to experiment until you find one that does not cause an error.  If you can set a custom one, set it to "en-us".

 

When will this be fixed?

This has been fixed in PlayerPal 4.2 service release 1 and later.  Download PlayerPal now.

 

Be notified of new releases

Subscribe to the PlayerPal Blog.

This has been fixed in PlayerPal 4.2 service release 1 and later.  Download PlayerPal now.

The problem shown by PlayerPal

There is no music in the PlayerPal library. The library exists but there is nothing in it.

The specific error message reported was:
Unable to find any tracks in the PlayerPal music library.

If you see this message and you DO have music in your player library then there is a problem.  It is likely that you live in a country where a comma "," is used as the decimal character rather than a dot ".". 

How to solve it

This will be fixed in the next version of PlayerPal (4.3).  Until that is released you can do the following to workaround the problem:

Note:  This will change settings for all applications on your PC

1. Open the Windows Control Panel
2. Open Regional and Language options
3. Press the "Customize" button
4. Change the "Decimal symbol" character from a comma "," to a dot "." (without the quote marks!).

When will this be fixed?

This has been fixed in PlayerPal 4.2 service release 1 and later.  Download PlayerPal now.