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JSI Tip 10090. Specified device not open or not recognized by MCI?


On a fresh install of Windows XP, a reader experienced the following error while trying to use their Instant Immersion 102 Languages application:

System error: MCI error: Specified device not open or not recognized by MCI

NOTE: MCI stands for Multimedia Control Interface.

This behavior was caused by a missing AVIVideo Value Name, a REG_SZ data type, at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\MCI32.

When I display the Value Names at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\MCI32 using REG QUERY "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\MCI32", I see the following Value Names and data values:

    AVIVideo    REG_SZ  mciavi32.dll
    CDAudio     REG_SZ  mcicda.dll
    Sequencer   REG_SZ  mciseq.dll
    WaveAudio   REG_SZ  mciwave.dll
    MPEGVideo   REG_SZ  mciqtz32.dll
NOTE: While the AVIVideo Value Name was missing from the registry, the mciavi32.dll library was present at %SystemRoot%\System32.

Opening a CMD.EXE window and running

REG ADD "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\MCI32" /V AVIVideo /T REG_SZ /F /D "mciavi32.dll"

corrected the problem.



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