KB968816 prevents WMP10 playing some MP3 files

It appears that recent Windows XP security update KB968816 breaks WMP 10.
I noticed that some MP3 files would not play. I am running XP SP3 with all
latest security patches. Though I have now uninstalled KB968816.

I found the following problem reported on the web somewhere. It sounds like
my problem (the symptoms are the same) but I can't vouch for the detailed
analysis though the chap does appear to know what he is talking about.

>>>
I've encountered a problem with MCE / Windows Media Player 10, after
installation of update KB968816 (Security Update for Windows Media Format
Runtime).

After this update, MCE and WMP refuse to play any MP3s containing a TLEN
(Total Length) field in the ID3 tags (which were previously playable), giving
the message:

"The file you tried to play <filename> is either missing, corrupt or in
a location that is not currently available." (MCE2005)
or
"Windows Media Player cannot play the file. The Player might not support
the file type or might not support the codec that was used to compress the
file." (WMP10)

TLEN is a commonly-used field present in a large number of commercially
available MP3s and is also inserted by several MP3 creation programs.
Manually removing the TLEN field from the MP3 file results in the file
becoming playable; re-creating the tag results in the error message
re-occuring.

This problem has occurred on 3 separate XP systems (2 with MCE2005/SP2+WMP10
and one with just XP/SP2+WMP10). I've also tested this out on a clean
install of XP+WMP10+SP3. Manually applying KB968816 causes the error;
uninstalling it allows the files to play.

This seems to be a bug in update KB968816 (if this field can't be supported
for some reason, the value should be ignored; the file should still play).

Obvious courses of action are to:
* remove KB968816 - since this is a "critical security update", I'm not
comforable with that; or
* remove TLEN from every MP3 in my collection - which I'm also not happy
with, since that's a "moderate" amount of effort, and a loss of data, just to
work around a bug.
>>>

I'm hoping that this information can somehow get back to the Microsoft
development team.

I'll follow this up for you if verified.

Can you confirm the playback isue was resolved when you rolled back
KB9688816 (have you re-checked Add/Remove programs to ensure this KB
is not installed any more ?)

Hi Neil,

What I actually did after discovering it was likely that KB968816 was
causing my WMP10 problem was the following.

I reinstalled WMP10.

I then did a Windows update an installed all the high priority patches
except KB968816.

Windows update now keeps telling me I have an update to install.

I have checked add/remove programs and there is no sign of KB968816.

Regards, Ian Walker

KB (Knowledgebase) 968816 is an article that covers a sercurity issue:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968816/en-us

This is the actual critical update:
MS09-047

And this is it's description:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sec.../ms09-047.mspx

Also in above link, there is a whole heap of further links for you to
wade through.

A google brought 30,000 results for MS09-047, just one:
http://www.pandasecurity.com/homeuse...13110/MS09-047

My opinion, keep the critical update and for playback of MP3's without
having to tweak - don't use Windows Media of any sort!
Or tweak each MP3.
Or uninstall the critical update and switch off automatic updating -
exposed!

So at this point you can confirm the issue is not present (at least
until you update again) ?

The "update to install" is almost certainly media player 11 again,
although it's not an "update" it's actually the complete player...

I tried to raise the issue as an "Early warning" signal but it met the
wrong criteria (possible bug) so I've got to raise it as a tech
support incident instead which means a lot more data gathering.

Also that will take 2-4 weeks to activate my tech support contract so
I won't be able to reply on this much for quite some time.

Do you have a specific sample file showing this? My recreation of your
'broken' file might work: it's always slightly better to reproduce the
failure directly.

I tried this on WMP*11* on XP SP3 with a bunch of TLEN'd MP3 files and they
all worked fine. It's possible that either A: your problems requires
specific files or B: it's isolated out to WMP10(?).

I'm the author of the original item that was quoted in the first posting of
this thread (original location:
http://www.microsoft.com/communities...cr=&sloc=&p=1).

I might now be able to add a little more detail to the issue.

The problem does not (as I originally thought) affect *all* MP3 files with a
TLEN field. Only MP3 files in which the TLEN field is Unicode-formatted are
affected. These will not play after KB968816 is installed. MP3 files with
ISO-8859-1(ASCII)-formatted TLEN fields play successfully as they did prior
to KB968816.

This use of Unicode for TLEN formatting is valid, as defined by the ID3
specifications (see http://www.id3.org/id3v2.4.0-structure#line-362 and
http://www.id3.org/id3v2.3.0#TLEN).

TLEN contains the length in milliseconds of the file, represented as a
numeric string. According to the ID3 specification , this string may be
represented in a number of different formats, identified by a "text encoding
description byte". These formats include ASCII and Unicode. The TLEN field
has this "text encoding description byte", but it appears to be zero
(indicating ISO-8859-1 /ASCII) in all ID3 tags created by WMP10, and
post-KB968816 WMP10 seems to insist (erroneously) that it should be zero.

As stated in my original posting, this issue is easily reproducible by
taking a clean install of XP, installing WMP10 and then SP3. Manually
applying KB968816 to this clean system causes files with Unicode-formatted
TLEN tags to fail and uninstalling KB968816 allows these files to play.

I haven't carried out any tests on WMP*11*.

I'd be most grateful if this could be escalated within Microsoft. If
necessary, I can provide samples of MP3 files with Unicode TLEN tags to
Microsoft for testing.

It's U-turn time.

I'd previously said that the problem was that WMP10/KB968816 were at fault
for rejecting files containing Unicode TLEN fields. However, on further
investigation, at http://www.id3.org/id3v2.3.0#sec3.3 it says explicitly:

All numeric strings and URLs are always encoded as ISO-8859-1.

So it appears that KB968816 is simply enforcing the standard more rigorously
than before and, as a result, is catching out some ID3 creation tools that
don't use ISO-8859-1 (ASCII) for all numeric strings.
In my case, the problem was with MP3Tag, and I've filed a report which the
developers have acknowledged as a confirmed bug.
For those interested, the bug report is here:
http://forums.mp3tag.de/index.php?showtopic=10412 and further discussion is
here: http://forums.mp3tag.de/index.php?showtopic=10411 .

Regards,
gvm