I have used Win95-Win7, and I have always been able to play midi files out of the box. I'm not trying to play these midi files through a USB device nor am I trying to create midi files using a USB midi device. I'm simply interested in playing midi files in any audio player like: Windows Media Player, VLC, IrfanView, Clementine or anything else.
Steps I have taken:
1. Using the file explorer I found my collection of midi files and tried to play one through Windows Media Player. I got the following dialog: "Windows Media Player cannot play the file because there is a problem with your sound device. There might not be a sound device installed on your computer, it might be in use by another program, or it might not be functioning properly."
- I tried shutting down every program running on the system, and trying again, but I got the same result.
2. Downloaded, installed, and tried playing them in GomAudio.
- I don't get a warning dialog, but the program tries to play, and then just skips it in its play list.
3. Downloaded, installed, VLC. I got the following message: "No suitable decoder module: VLC does not support the audio or video format "MIDI". Unfortunately there is no way for you to fix this."
- From what I read on the internet, I guess there was a license issue with VLC and they took out support of midi files playing under Windows.
4. Downloaded, installed IrfanView which is known for opening all types of files. I get a warning dialog when it tries to play a file, and it says something about Windows, but I can't read the whole message before it disappears.
5. Read some audio sites that suggested using "Vista MIDI Fix" program, but I believe that is more for if you have multiple USB midi devices which I have non. When I run that program it says: "No MIDI devices found!" as if there is nothing installed on Windows 8.1 to play the files.
6. I downloaded, installed, and tried Timidity++ too, but that just gave me silence as well without really playing the file.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
