"There was a problem playing the audio file." with built-in audio player

Hi Friederika,

Thank you for posting your issue on the Microsoft Community forum.

I understand that you are facing issues while playing an Audio attachment in outlook.com.

To help me understand the issue better, please answer the following questions:

1. How are you accessing Outlook.com?
2. Are you using a web browser or an email client?
   (Please provide us the name and the version of the same.)
3. Are you able to play other Audio/Video files on the same browser?
4. Do you face this issue on a different browser as well?

It is likely that the issue you are facing is with the browser you are using to access Outlook.com.

I suggest you to try playing a voicemail using the In Private Mode of Internet Explorer. Please use the steps below to help you with the same

1. Open Internet Explorer from the desktop.
2. Press Ctrl + Shift + P.
3. Try playing a Voicemail from the In private browsing.

Please get back with the required information and the result and we will be happy to further assist you with this issue.

Hello and thanks for responding. Answers below:

Hi Friederika,

1. How are you accessing Outlook.com? HP G72 laptop, Win 7, home WiFi network to DSL (Frontiernet).
2. Are you using a web browser or an email client? IE11, current updates.
   (Please provide us the name and the version of the same.)
3. Are you able to play other Audio/Video files on the same browser? Only the "Play" button in the Outlook.com appears to invoke this behavior and only on WAV files. I tried mailing myself an MP3, and it worked fine, though the little player that popped up looked different than the WAV player. Downloading and invoking Media Player works fine with all file types I've tried.
4. Do you face this issue on a different browser as well? I just noticed today that in Chrome it works just fine.  This must be IE-specific.

It is likely that the issue you are facing is with the browser you are using to access Outlook.com.

I suggest you to try playing a voicemail using the In Private Mode of Internet Explorer. Please use the steps below to help you with the same

1. Open Internet Explorer from the desktop.
2. Press Ctrl + Shift + P.
3. Try playing a Voicemail from the In private browsing.

Please get back with the required information and the result and we will be happy to further assist you with this issue.

I tried in-private browsing and it made no difference.  Same error.

 Appreciate your effort on this.

Hi Friederika,

My apologies for the delay in response.

It appears that the codecs required by Internet Explorer to play WAV files are non functional.

Lets try to resolve this issue by reinstalling Internet Explorer. Please refer to the steps mentioned in the article below to assist you with the same.

Install or uninstall Internet Explorer 

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/internet-explorer/install-ie#ie=ie-11-win-7

Hope this information is helpful. Please reply if you need further assistance or have any other queries regarding Windows, we are here to help you.

This made things worse.  I followed the IE11 uninstall instructions, which rolled back to IE10.

The WAV player error remained exactly the same.

Then I tried to re-install IE11. 

The downloadable installer just reported that it had failed (no error code) and gave a link to a trouble shooting page, which was all about things that can't be a problem (minimum configurations, mandatory updates, etc.) because the IE11 installed with no issues the first time.

Then I tried re-installing IE11 again, but using Windows Update.  This time the failure came with a 9C59 error code.  The troubleshooting page talks about uninstalling IE9 (not 10) for this error.  I am not going to roll back to IE9.  That's just crazy.

Hope you can get me out of this hole.  At this point I have wasted hours and can't run IE11 on the machine.

Okay re the problem below, I finally got IE11 to re-install by running sfc. 

But the player error is still exactly the same.

This made things worse.  I followed the IE11 uninstall instructions, which rolled back to IE10.

The WAV player error remained exactly the same.

Then I tried to re-install IE11. 

The downloadable installer just reported that it had failed (no error code) and gave a link to a trouble shooting page, which was all about things that can't be a problem (minimum configurations, mandatory updates, etc.) because the IE11 installed with no issues the first time.

Then I tried re-installing IE11 again, but using Windows Update.  This time the failure came with a 9C59 error code.  The troubleshooting page talks about uninstalling IE9 (not 10) for this error.  I am not going to roll back to IE9.  That's just crazy.

Hope you can get me out of this hole.  At this point I have wasted hours and can't run IE11 on the machine.

Hi Friederika,

Thank you for the update.

Set speakers as the default device

Follow these steps:

a. Click "Start" and select "Control Panel".

b. In the search box, type "Sound".

c. From the search results, click the "Sound" option.

d. Under the "Playback" tab, click "Speakers"

e. Click "Set Default" at the bottom.

f. Click "Apply" and "OK" to save the settings.

Please revert if you face any issues.