Video file that chages screen settings when played???

[QuaziquestGM]

I tried playing a wma file and it changed my monitor color and resolution settings. It blasted the color back to 16, and blew up the screen so far that the program task bar was about a foot under my desk. It stayed that way even after I killed the vid player. I had to restart the computer to fix it.

So my questions are:

1) What gives?
2) Should I break out the virus scrubbers?
3) Can I change any settings to stop a "difficult" file from changing anything?
4) Is there a quick way to revert to "normal" screen settings after something like this happens?

[Thanee]

There are tools for quick changing resolutions, but normally you can simply right click on your desktop, select Properties; in the window that opens go to the rightmost tab (Settings, I think), where you can change your screen resolution directly.

Biggest annoyance is, that Windows usually shuffles the desktop icons around when changing resolutions.

Not sure why a video player would change your resolution settings, though. What do you use?

I can recommend VLC, which works very well.

Bye
Thanee

[Redrobes]

Yeah VLC is great and I would bar the use of Windows Media Player. Of all the bits of windows its by far the worst bit of it. Worse than even IE. Oh and while I rant WMV and WMA are the devil too since you can embed more than audio and video into them. Get shot of them all and use a decent media player and you will be just fine. Otherwise expect viruses and lots of other PC fiddling to be going on whilst you listen to downloaded music or watch any vid clips. BTW, Real Player is another one to bar at all costs too if you have any intention of keeping control of your own computer.

[Aus_Snow]

The behaviour doesn't ring a bell, but of course it still might be something dangerous. No idea, sorry.

That said, I'd recommend having a decent antivirus application running at all times in Windows (or at least nearly all times, if there are situations where it really does impact perfomance) and possibly a firewall and anti-spyware app as well, depending on your general PC use. Also, running a full antivirus scan (and a full anti-spyware scan too, why not) once a week, say, is a good idea. And backing things up to something like an external drive, if you have a lot of documents (etc.) about as often as you think you might need to (that's also once a week for me).

If you're concerned about internet security, try Firefox in place of Internet Explorer too. Ad Block Plus is pretty much a must, if you go that way. Oh, and Thunderbird in place of (for example) Outlook or Outlook Express. That one doesn't really need any add-ons, which is nice.

For video players, there are a few alternatives to VLC, like Gom Player, f'rex.

But hey, whatever works. It doesn't bother me what people decide to use. . . except if they're local, and they call me to fix things for them. . .