Issue when trying to play mp3 file via mciSendString (MCIERR_CANNOT_LOAD_DRIVER)

Question

When trying to play a mp3 file using mciSendString, via the following commands:

open "{FileName}" [type mpegvideo] alias {AliasName} //tried both with and without type mpegvideo

and

play {AliasName}

I get the error MCIERR_CANNOT_LOAD_DRIVER : 'Unknown problem while loading the specified device driver'.

Have read in this post that you need to have a MP3 codec installed, but I do have one, so that's not the issue.

After searching around, trying to find what the issue was i stumbled upon this project, it's a audio player which uses mciSendString, and decided to try it out to see if the same issue occurs, funnily enough it worked just fine and could play mp3 files... so what is the issue, why is not working in my project.

Here is the code (This is just test code so sorry if there isn't enough exception handling):

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

namespace Test
{
    unsafe class Program
    {
        [DllImport("winmm.dll", SetLastError = true)]
        public static extern bool mciGetErrorString([In] int error, [In, Out] char[] buffer, [In] int bufferCount);

        [DllImport("winmm.dll", SetLastError = true)]
        public static extern int mciSendString([In] string command, [Optional, In, Out] char[] returnBuffer, [Optional, In] int returnBufferCount, [Optional, In] IntPtr hNotifyWindow);

        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            Play(@"D:\Audio\simple_beat.mp3");

            Console.ReadLine();

            Close();
        }

        static void Play(string fileName)
        {
            Close();

            if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(fileName) && File.Exists(fileName))
            {
                int error = mciSendString($"open \"{fileName}\" type mpegvideo alias RandomAudio", null, 0, IntPtr.Zero);

                if (error != 0)
                {
                    error = mciSendString($"open \"{fileName}\" alias RandomAudio", null, 0, IntPtr.Zero);

                    if (error != 0)
                    {
                        throw new MciException(error);
                    }
                }
                error = mciSendString($"play RandomAudio", null, 0, IntPtr.Zero);

                if (error != 0)
                {
                    Close();

                    throw new MciException(error);
                }
            }
        }

        static void Close()
        {
            var error = mciSendString($"close RandomAudio", null, 0, IntPtr.Zero);

            if (error != 0)
            {
                throw new MciException(error);
            }
        }

        class MciException : SystemException
        {
            public MciException(int error)
            {
                var buffer = new char[128];

                if (mciGetErrorString(error, buffer, 128))
                {
                    _message = new string(buffer);

                    return;
                }
                _message = "An unknown error has occured.";
            }

            public override string Message
            {
                get
                {
                    return _message;
                }
            }

            private string _message;
        }
    }
}

Answer 1

Found what the issue was, mciSendString can not open and play MP3 files in a console application, but it will play them if the application is a winform.

So if you want to play a MP3 via mciSendString you will need to create a winform app, and if you need a console instead of a form, just set the form size to zero and use AllocConsole to create a console.