WinAMP 5.5 is a buggy piece of garbage
I’ve used WinAMP forever (since WinAMP 0.92- released a decade ago.) I installed the latest version today and it’s a complete piece of shit. It won’t even run on my (admittedly crappy) work machine. It tries to scan my “watch folders” at startup and hangs every time. EVERY TIME. What’s worse is it looks like it’s doing it based on the file name of an eMusic download. Which is funny since WinAMP pushed trial subscriptions to eMusic as part of the install.
Which leaves me with no music player I actually want to use installed on this machine.
What’s worse, with WinAMP completely useless and the fact that I don’t like iTunes (resource hog) or Windows Media Player I’m not even sure what other options I might have.
Thank god I found this old version of Winamp to replace this piece of garbage 
Zandro Says:
I’m looking at the hung process of version 5.5 in my task manager right now…
Here’s a web gem: http://www.winampheaven.net/old.php
What’s worse for me regarding their new release is that it is no longer portable by default. I read that the deletion of paths.ini and tweaking of the registry-related parameters in Winamp.ini is required, but why bother? Thankfully, I zipped my 5.32 install just before the udpate, since I practically knew how it would be.
Posted: October 17th, 2007 at 1:23 am
rob Says:
Thankfully we have archives like the above, so we can go back to proper versions.
I wonder how widespread the problem is. It can’t be that widespread or else is should have been easily caught in testing.
Posted: October 17th, 2007 at 7:33 am
Zandro Says:
A likely factor in the success of portability would seem to be the configuration given during the install routine… One user I talk with just tested moving his copy on another computer, and had no problems. He had not installed Winamp Angent, though nor had I. I skipped adding all portable media devices, yet he permitted them.
I am willing to try a clean install of 5.5 with minimal bundled extras into an empty folder, then add third party plugins afterward, hoping it will at least accept my ritualistic configuration scheme meanwhile.
Dear Nullsoft, I shouldn’t be eyeing 2.95 four and a half years later.
Posted: October 17th, 2007 at 9:35 am
Zandro Says:
I discovered the culprits of my troubles of being able to even start version 5.5 with my set of plugins:
dsp - centercut chronotron sc sps stacker stexpand aacplus
enc - flac lame wav
gen - ml nviewfix
in - bass cdda dshow flac gsf lamp midi mod mp3 mp4 nez nsf psf sid2 snes usf vac3 vorbis wave wm zip
ml - history playlists
out - disk ds null wave xf
vis - avs keyled nsfs
1. in_bass.dll is an alternative to in_mod.dll… much better replication of the tracker formats. However, it is reliant on a specific runtime library added to WA’s root directory during the plugin’s install. I’ll simply have to reinstall the plugin later.
2. gen_lucidamp.dll This is what kept my 5.5 in memory after closing. It enables control of the transparency effect of Winamp’s windows. But now the API is incompatible. I remove the plugin, and voila. I have Winamp.
Hold on, lemme copy it to a Win98 machine untouched by Winamp… I’ll need to add USB mass storage support first.
Posted: October 17th, 2007 at 10:25 am
Zandro Says:
Ah, final message…
As I make sole use of 98lite’d installs of Win98, I may be the odd one out on this situation. Previous 5.x versions have worked, but 5.5 is reporting a failed attempt to link to missing export SHELL32.DLL:SHGetFolderPathW. This may be present in full Win98 installs, but I’m not completely ruling them out either.
Now, testing the portability on a more modern OS… I didn’t have any trouble! The only change is that I am faced with the filetype/member registration wizard. Not a bad thing actually, since who would want to see their music files associated with a mysterious media player seemingly to have come from the USB port?
Winamp Bloat… Still relatively optional. The player can still be built to user preference, front and back. I’m not painfully dissuaded just yet.
Posted: October 17th, 2007 at 11:53 am
Steve Says:
Don’t install the media library, that may be the shit that’s slowing you down. When I first installed it, I didn’t add the library and it ran fine, but then I reinstalled it to try out it’s library and it ran very slowly.
Posted: October 24th, 2007 at 7:13 pm
rob Says:
I think you’re right. I might experiment for a bit soon to see if I can discover pinpoint the exact cause with my normal setup.
Posted: October 24th, 2007 at 7:49 pm
neonix Says:
Lots of bugs, disappointing. One that especially bothers me is 64th note being incompatible with 5.5
Posted: December 16th, 2007 at 11:12 am