We may have been the only people in America using the Wal-Mart Music Store plug-in for Windows Media Player over a dial-up connection, so feel free to ignore this note if it doesn't apply to you. A few months ago, Wal-Mart came out with a mandatory update for its Music Store plug-in to Windows Media Player. Unfortunately, it would not perform that upgrade on my laptop. The failure message said something about the installation package being incomplete or corrupt, which in retrospect should have been puzzling, because we were able to continue to download other items – just not the Wal-Mart Music Store plug-in and music from the Wal-Mart browser-based Music Store.
So, after a several-month delay, we finally got cable Internet access (don't ask). On a hunch, I fired up the Wal-Mart Music Store inside Windows Media Player, which politely tells me that it needs an update, then proceeds to get and install the update like we had never had trouble with any previous updates.
The moral of this story (if it has one): Don't be too quick to judge that your downloading setup is faulty – sometimes, your download speed may just be too slow. (We went from around 33kbps with dial-up to 3.8Mbps with cable Internet access hookup, which is around a 115X speed increase.)
