I have a Virtual PC VHD that I downloaded from Microsoft here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=11575 This VM instance is for IE9 testing, and it contains Windows 7 Ultimate (32-bit).
In this VM instance, I can not play avi files (I haven't tried other video types) through embedded Windows Media Player in the IE9 browser supplied. Well, they play, but the video portion is completely black. Some type of overlaying isn't working right. I mean, we are talking HTML as simple as this:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>Testing</title>
<body>
<object id="mpVideo2" width="100%" height="100%"
classid="CLSID:6BF52A52-394A-11d3-B153-00C04F79FAA6">
<param name="URL" value="http://SERVER_NAME/THE_PATH/split.avi">
<param name="AutoStart" value="True">
<param name="UIMode" value="full" />
<param name="WindowlessVideo" value="True" />
</object>
</body>
</html>
Though, if you remove the WindowlessVideo param it works fine. But, we need WindowlessVideo set to true so that it works nice within our real app. Of note: split.avi is just a random avi I found on my computer that Microsoft supplies (it "splits" the Microsoft logo). I wanted to rule out any issues with our avi's and the codec's they use.
I have traced the issue to the DirectDraw Acceleration. If you run dxdiag, DirectDraw Acceleration, Direct3d Acceleration, and AGP Texture Acceleration are all 'Not Available', and there are no Enable/Disable buttons.
I did find this link: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/191660 and I went through the Methods, and Method 3 was to install the latest version of DirectX End-User Runtimes Web Installer (dxwebsetup.exe). I did this, and DirectDraw Acceleration is now Enabled (still no Enable/Disable buttons), but the other two are still 'Not Available'. This Method and the others did not help, the video is still black.
I'm wondering how you get the Direct X in a VM instance to work right.
I have another VM instance I use a lot, that I created a while back, that doesn't have any issues. Only DirectDraw is enabled (the others 'Not Available'). For my host machine, all three are enabled. The VM instance is running Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition, and my host machine is Windows 7 Professional (64 bit).
Virtual PC is 6.0.156.0
Here are the dxdiag screens for the display:
The host machine:
The 2003 instance that works fine (looks like only DirectDraw is needed):
The Win7 instance that makes me sad: