Sound problems

[nac]

I'm experiencing a strange problem. The system sounds play correctly, but when I'm trying to play a .rmvb, a bit of the sound plays, but then it stops and there is only silence. The system doesn't seem strained as there is no lag in the background applications. OpenSUSE 10.3 did not have this problem, but it didn't play the file smoothly.

I think I should mention that I installed Mint after booting the livecd using the "Safe Mode graphics" option. Was that a mistake?

PS. Could playing with OSs like this seriously damage my system in any way? I have backed up all my data.

[Husse]

You could not damage your system if you mean hardware
If you mean software - of course, but only if you make mistakes like formatting a partition that should not have been formatted and such
Safe graphics is vesa so if you haven't installed the correct video driver do that as vesa does not give you any great video performance
The rmvp is some Real audio format
You might want to convert to some other format

[MagnusB]

Probably a codec error, like Husse pointed out you are trying to play a Real Audio file, try to convert it to mp3 or ogg, which is much better supported in linux. And if my memory serves me correctly, Real player should be in the Software Portal. And playing around with OSS can potentially break your sound, but nothing to serious, but as I said, I doubt this is a sound issue, unless you have this trouble with other formats as well?