If you're having problems streaming XM in general, it is likely that your XM-specific 3rd party tool is now deprecated and can no longer be used.
After a recent hardware upgrade on my system, I noticed that my XM Radio Sidebar Gadget stopped playing sounds, despite all other sounds apparently working on the system. After further testing, the actual XM Radio Online page also did not work. In both cases, the player component would just revert to "Ready" without any error message.
In the end (and for other reasons), I ended up completely re-installing my system, but the same problem reappeared in a few days. My OS is WIndows 7 x64 Ultimate, but internet research suggests this problem happens on a range of Vista and 7 systems -- or anything running WIndows Media Player 11.0 or 12.0.
Some initial research suggested that it was a problem with the Macromedia Flash player, but wiping and reinstalling this didn't work. Nor did the usual wipe and reinstall of sound card drivers. In my case, the problem happened with numerous sound cards (Creative X-Fi as well as onboard.) Eventually, my research let me to this thread, which proved key to solving the problem:
It turns out that the Windows Media Player settings for streaming somehow become corrupt/reset. All non-streaming play and sound still works. So the solution is to erase the WMP settings and make it recreate .
- Locate the directory on your system drive that contains the file WMSDKNS.XML.
- In my case, on WIndows 7 x64, it is C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Media\12.0
- Delete or rename that directory, for example to "...\Windows Media.backup" If the system says it is locked, make sure you remove all streaming gadgets from the sidebar, reboot the system, and don't start media playing after startup.
- Once the directory is deleted, re-install the XM Radio Sidebar Gadget. Start playing a channel. If you have solved the problem, you should get sound.
- You can check that WMP recreated the directory and created a new WMSDKNS.XML file.
