I'm running Win98.

WMP is playing funny games with me. It plays CDs when I put a CD in (even with song-titles etc.) and when I load WMP it launches its Internet Media Guide thing fine also.

But it will not load in IE to play any online streaming videos, it says "connecting" and never connects, it hangs and I have to ctrl-alt-delete to close all IE windows.
It will also not play any videos I load directly into it, again just says "opening media" and hangs there.
I can play most videos on other software but not WMVs, which is rejected by RealPlayer and QuickTime.

I've uninstalled and re-installed WMP several times from scratch and nothing helps.

Any ideas?

edit: as I was writing this I tried again, (just to make sure!), WMP informed me I needed an update (so I thought "maybe that's it!"), I downloaded, installed, rebooted and configured the update. Same thing. Doesn't get past "Opening Media".

Just as a test:

Go to Start/Run/ MPLAYER2.EXE

See if you can directly run videos from there.

nope, same thing, says "Opening" and nothing happens, have to close it (if I press the Stop icon it says "Aborting, please wait", and hangs)