Real Player 7.0 Issues/Problems

Hi Everyone,

I run Windows 98 on a desktop using Netscape 4.75 and I.E 5.0. I currently have had Real Player 7.0 for about 2 years with no problems. I don't know if it's a bad computer day for me or what but here is the situation.

I went to a site that uses a utility called Yahoo Media Helper, this little do-hickey checks the media players on your system and asks your Internet Connection Speed. (I have Windows Media Player 6.1, but also Real Player 7.0) I think real player is better sound quality so it asked which player I wanted to use and I clicked on Real Player 7.0.

Whenever I go to a site that uses Real Audio, I get the following error message:

"Currently, Autoupdate has no plug in to play your selection." I clicked on "more information", scrolled down to my player and it suggested that I install these little plug-in components (Only about 650 kbs...no big deal) anyway, I did that and I still get the same message about the plug in issue. I tried just opening Real Player also, and going to one of the "pre-set radio stations that they give you." Sometimes I get the message about the "Autoupdate has no plug in to play your selection" but just now I get "Connection to server could not be established, you may be exeriencing network problems" I don't know if this is a server issue or a Real Player issue.

On more thing, if I click on "Help" in Real Player 7.0, and then "contents", the help menu appears just fine. But lets say I visit a site that requires Real Player to open, then it says, "Windows can not find the Help file, do you want to try to find this file yourself?" If I close out and then reopen Real player manually, the help screen appears normal. Note that this happened once before, but at that time, Real player was functioning and playing normally. Also, the old download that I have was the G2 player, in other words, I updated from within Real Player G2 way back in 1999, rather than a seperate download of Real Player 7.

Ok now my question, Real Player 8 is no longer offered at www.real.com (They have some new Real One Player that has a bunch of stuff that I am not interested in) My friend has a download of Real Player 8 on CD ROM. If I were to install that, would that take care of these problems? (I don't care about the Help menu thing) or do you guys think that this really is a server issue as the error message suggests? Thanks much!

Jack