Xmms used to work fine. Then i decided to try upgrade from kernel 2.2.19 to 2.4.5. After this upgrade xmms stopped working. When I clicked on play the song comes up for display as usual but does not start playing. the button depresses and then pops back up, but no song.

For this and other reasons I decided to wipe my system and reinstall linux from the start using the original kernel (2.2.19). I reformatted and everything. Much to my surprise after working once the same thing started happening. I've tried reinstalling xmms, tried messing with the config files, but nothing works.

I dedided to try another program Qmpeg, but the exact same thing happens.
I don't get any error messages either.

I'm confused because it worked perfect on my first installation, and then worked once when I downgraded again to 2.2.19. It has to be something independent from xmms itself, but I have no idea where to start looking.

Since you don't seem to mind reinstalling, you could do it again BUT instead choose menu OR expert install of packages and you can choose the 2.4.5 kernel over the 2.2.19. You should be set to run that kernel then. Make sure PNP OS is turned off in your BIOS also. By default Slack doesn't give all the fancy permissions redhaat etc,...do. So there will be some configuration.

I had trouble with XMMS. Sound was working, except in XMMS.
I checked the permissions - it was running SUID and after I CHMODed to 755, it was OK.

I get this error sometimes... Strangely, Xmms seems to need a load time... Sometimes my Xmms need 1 or 2 mins before starting a song... But during this delay If I press the play button again, xmms freeze over.I don't know why.

Btw you need to set right to /dev/mixer and hum another files (look in xmms plugins I dont remember what's the second one) if you want to play song in user mode.
Just do chmod +666 /dev/mixer and /dev/"other files"

hope this help you

I already looked at permissions and it wasn't that. Suprisingly enough I actually figured that part out for myself.

I've completely unistalled xmms and now qmpeg works fine. Mabye xmms was messing up a dll or something. Anyways, it's too bad because I had a nice arctic theme going for my whole desktop and I can't find the right skin for qmpeg. Oh well, just got to remind myself that it's still 100x better then stuttering, slow, akward, overbloated Windoze.

Wrong again. Now it doesn't work. I guess it was just a fluke or something, but when I rebooted it didn't work again and hasn't after subsequent boots. Sometimes it works for a split second, but then just quits.

However now I get the following error messages:

Warning, unrecognized mpg123 output: "Skipped RIFF Header!"
Error: mpg123 stopped sending data!

And once when it hung really bad and I had to reboot during the shut down I got something like:

trident drain_dac dma time out

Any ideas?

Wow... trident is your sound card right? Xmms make your sound card running crazy hehehe.
What's the modules you're using?

And I don't understand why you are getting an error msg about mpeg123 when you are running Xmss.. very strange.... Do you take a look at your loaded plugins? Maybe there something really wrongly configurated?

well it's fixed. i once again reinstalled and went into my bios and shut off all my com and parallel ports, since i wasn't using them anyway. this appears to have solved the problem. it wasn't an irq conflict, but it might have been dma (if that's possible).