title: Catastrophic failure (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8000FFFF) creating a playlist with axwindowsMediaPlayer
body: <p>I am using the axwindowsMediaPlayer object to show videos in a winform. In particular I want to play a playlist.</p>
  
  <p>Everything works fine on my pc (win7) and used to work fine also in another pc with winXP (the pc of the final user).</p>
  
  <p>But something happened a couple of days ago: on the XP PC I started to receive the following expcetion</p>
  
  <pre><code>Unhandled Exception:
  
  Catastrophic failure (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8000FFFF (E_UNEXPECTED))
  
  System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException
  
  Stack Trace:
     at WMPLib.IWMPPlaylistCollection.newPlaylist(String bstrName)
     at BrinaS941.ScreenSaverVideo.ScreenSaver_Load(Object sender, EventArgs e)
     at System.Windows.Forms.Form.OnLoad(EventArgs e)
     at System.Windows.Forms.Form.OnCreateControl()
     at System.Windows.Forms.Control.CreateControl(Boolean fIgnoreVisible)
     at System.Windows.Forms.Control.CreateControl()
     at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmShowWindow(Message&amp; m)
     at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message&amp; m)
     at System.Windows.Forms.ScrollableControl.WndProc(Message&amp; m)
     at System.Windows.Forms.ContainerControl.WndProc(Message&amp; m)
     at System.Windows.Forms.Form.WmShowWindow(Message&amp; m)
     at System.Windows.Forms.Form.WndProc(Message&amp; m)
     at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.OnMessage(Message&amp; m)
     at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message&amp; m)
     at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Here the code that rises the exception:</p>
  
  <pre><code>private void ScreenSaverVideo_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
  {
      WMPLib.IWMPPlaylist playlist = VideoPlayer.playlistCollection.newPlaylist("myplaylist");
      WMPLib.IWMPMedia media;
      VideoPlayer.uiMode = "none";
      VideoPlayer.settings.volume = 10;
      [....]
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The exception started to be risen while the application was working and now keep on having the same behavior.</p>
  
  <p>I tried to reinstall Windows Media Player (11) on the XP machine, but nothing changed.</p>
  
  <p>UPDATE:</p>
  
  <p>I tried to comment the part of code related to the playlist (and use the method "URL" to set the video a want to play) and everything works fine. I am really puzzled...</p>
  
  <p>Any help would be really appreciated.
  Thanks</p>