In Firefox 3.0.4, get "WM7 Activex control not found" instead of a video
 

Hi,

I am currently working on a paper for school, and I need to watch videos, and write a paper on a couple of these presentations.

These videos are posted at the following url: <http://www.bus.wisc.edu/burrill/presentations/2009/>

When I try to access any presentation through Firefox 3.0.4, I get the following error message where I should be seeing the video: "WM7 Activex control not found".

I am currently running Slackware 12.2, but I do not believe that the distribution that I am running is relevant.

Some thoughts: I think that WM7 probably stands for Windows Media 7, and ActiveX is the loophole made by hackers that worked in Micro$oft in order to expose all computer resources to everyone on the Internet, but I don't care. I just need to watch the videos.

Is there any way that I can watch these videos on a Linux computer? Are there any plugins, or tweaks that I can make, or libraries that I can add that can parse this?

~Huck

ActiveX is a Windows-only technology. There might be a way to make it work under Wine, but don't hold your breath. I would complain to the Wisconsin School of Business. But again, don't hold your breath... their web server runs Microsoft-IIS 6.0. I'd bet they use Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Office, etc. They obviously expect you to use Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows to do your coursework.

from looking at that web page it was wrote using
Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 7.1

the web stie is MICROSOFT ONLY, for Linux an Mac "you are up sh??'s crick without..."

the only way to watch them is in MS windows USING windows media player . I have that REMOVED on my xp partition .i use mplayer and vlc on xp

I got the video to play by enabling User Agent Switcher with a firefox win32 string. You should already have a plugin that will handle wmp files. I use gecko-media player. Once you spoof the site with the windows string, you will be prompted on the side bar with...
***
Installing the Windows Media Port25 Plugin for Firefox will provide better playback.
[] Download the Plugin.
[] Continue without plugin.
[] Don't ask again.
***
Just select to continue and then your native plugin will handle the video

http://chrispederick.com/work/user-agent-switcher/

I used this user agent string (You can add any string you wish)
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.20) Gecko/20081217 Firefox/2.0.0.20

http://kdekorte.googlepages.com/gecko-mediaplayer

Thanks for the tips sandog. soulution works fine in ubuntu 9.04. Wake Forest links are the same...everything is micro$oft.

Gracias!
 

Wow -- my daughter called, unable to view a "blackboard" video for one of her classes...she and i worked on this over the phone, after 11PM, for nearly an hour to get it working -- she could see her teachers non-functioning video but i was locked out from the site so it was a little like the blind leading the unlearned....boy we started to get cranky -- found your post, figured out we had to put the "User Agent Switcher" button in the toolbar, and voila! :)

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!