Weird error in Fable: The Lost Chapters (video problem)

[Ouguiya]

Hello everyone.

I searched all of google up and down for this problem, but only found 6 sites adressing this problem, and none of them solving it.

On the Microsoft homepage, this problem is not adressed as well, so the only thing I can do now is to hope that someone of you knows what this could be.

A long time ago, I installed Fable: The Lost Chapters and played it, there, it worked just fine, which was about half a year ago.

Now I decided to play it again, and reinstalled it. There were no problems during the installation,

but, on running the game, I now always get the error message:
"Unable to play video. Please check that your video and audio hardware are working correctly.
Error Code: 0x80040241"

The problem is, that with this, not only the intro movie, but also every other movie in the game doesn't work as well. The game itself though is fine.

Now at first I tried the basic stuff: Restarting, reinstalling, updating drivers and firmwares, looking for patches, looking at the FAQ page on the Microsoft Site about fable, but none of this helped.

I also got the hint that maybe all had to do with codecs. However, I am able to play the movies (which are stored in /data/videos/) with Windows Media Player, so the files don't seem to be corrupt or anything of the like It seems that Fable is the only program which can't play it's own videos.

Now actually, I am out of ideas what else I could do to solve this matter. The strange thing just is that the game worked fine not so long ago, and with it the videos. I also haven't changed much at my computer. The operating system is still the same, and I have still the same hardware.

My computer Specs:

Operating system: Windows XP Home edition (SP 2)
Processor: Intel Pentium 4 (3.40 Ghz) (2 CPUs)
Amount of RAM: 1536 Mb
Graphics card: NVIDIA Geforce 6610 XL
Direct-X Version: Direct X 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)

I hope any of you can help me out there. Thanks in advance

Oug

[pharoah]

have a run through the follow these steps first link in my sig.if nothing there helps post back.

[jonasd]

I know this thread is old, but I haven't really seen a proper answer, so I thought, let's just reply.
I had the exact same problem and it was because the Windows Media Video codec V8 (or WMV2) was not registered "correctly".

There are a lot of "3rd-party" codec-packs out there. Often these codec packs re-install Windows Media codecs, or at least have the media players look for these codecs in the codec-pack directory, rather than the original microsoft locations. Media Player itself can locate these 3rd party codec locations, so you may be able to play these Fable wmv's in Media Player without trouble. To make a long story short:

- Fable uses the Windows Media Video (and audio) v8 codec.
- Make sure you have these codecs installed properly, meaning the Microsoft way and not by some 3rd party codec-pack.
- If you have 3rd party codec-packs, like k-lite or Nemo, uninstall them all, then reinstall mediaplayer.
- You may want to open a Fable WMV in a program like AVICODEC, which can tell you if the codecs are properly supported now.

You should be able to see the wmv's in Fable properly by now.
If you are not, then the codecs are probably still not installed properly. Make absolutely sure you get rid of all codec-packs (codecs may even be supplied by dvd burn software like Nero... I've seen it happen) before you reinstall Windows Media Player. Also, make sure you install Media Player 9 or later, otherwise the wmv8 and wma8 codecs aren't installed.

Hope this helps.

Greets!
Jonas

[edit]
P.S. You may of course re-install the 3rd party codec-packs, as long as you make sure you don't include any "WMV2", "WMV/v8" or look alikes in the installation.
[/edit]