The red frame of WMP is not a critical issue by itself. However, it's an indication that something in Avast 6 is not working properly and may cause other programs and features to malfunction.
It appears that the problem affects systems with Win XP SP3, running on older AMD processors. Is everyone with this problem using an ATi video card?
I have XP SP3 and an older AMD proc, but I have an nVidia Quadro FX vid card (3000 I think). So, might be more because of AMD and XP SP3. Anyone running a cracked version of XP? I am, and I'm not condoning it, but I purchased XP and the CD got scratched and I lost the key as well. So, I run a cracked version now even though I could download a retail version with my technet plus subscription at any time. Anyway, I paid for it so I don't care. I can run up to 10 installs of any MS product if I want. Just saying that it might have something to do with this WMP color prob.
OK, I know of a serious problem with AV6 vs. AV5 pertaining to the security settings in the registry.
When I installed AV6 on my AMD XP Pro SP2+all patches so far with an ASUS Graphics card that uses ATI in their drivers, the following 3 things happened:
1. Media player's background went all the way over to the red shade color.
2. I could not search in the explorer windows. The pane came up blank.
3. I could no longer see .png files in my browser.
I WAS RUNNING AS A REGULAR USER, NOT THE ADMIN (Like Vista wants you to run).
I Uninstalled Avast 6 and reinstalled 5 and problems 1 and 2 went away, but I still had problem 3 for my regular user accounts.
So I tried some registry fixes that try to update some of the keys and I found this:
"The user (or group) has to have permission to read the Registry Key
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Mime\Database\Content Type"
I noticed that the registry security settings on some entries were set so that there was no Everyone setting anymore. That means that when users (not admins) try to access the registry to determine things such as the proper handler class for .png images or MAYBE for the color of the media player's background, they can not open the registry entry anymore to determine the previously saved values.
So, I selected the key, pulled down edit...security and gave read writes to that user and the .png problem went away.
I have not determined if this is the problem with the red backgound yet because I am back to avast 5 and need to use my machine, not debug it, but if someone from Avast cares to experiment, this may lead to a fix for the problem.
I can imagine that Avast 6 tightens up security in the registry and may have gone a bit too far for certain systems.