Error -15000 when trying to play to Airport Express speakers

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Error -15000 when trying to play to Airport Express speakers

I've got a brand spanking new Dell laptop that came with Windows 8 installed, although I quickly updated to Windows 8.1 During that time, iTunes has never been able to connect to my Airport Express speakers. I used them just fine with my old computer under Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Until yesterday, whenever I tried to connect to a speaker, the program would pause for about 30 seconds, then give me the dreaded -15000 error.

Later yesterday I reconfigured my firewall (McAfee LiveSafe Internet Security) to not only allow iTunes to do whatever it wants with the network, but also to specifically open TCP and UDP ports associated with iTunes in the hopes of getting it working.

Now it doesn't give me the -15000 error, but it fails silently (without a popup). It doesn't connect to the speaker, but just leaves me with the computer speaker selected.

Any idea what's going wrong?

Windows 8

Posted on May 30, 2014 7:05 AM

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Answer 1

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mrgoofy Author

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9 points

Jun 17, 2014 8:43 AM in response to mrgoofy

Just to add to the discussion, I removed McAfee entirely, rebooted several times, and it still didn't work. The same problem happens with a tablet PC running Windows 8.1 and using the Windows Firewall.

My Airport Express Speakers are all First-Generation - is it possible that the First Generation Airport Express doesn't work with Windows 8.1?

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Answer 2

mrgoofy Author

Level 1

9 points

Jun 23, 2014 11:37 AM in response to mrgoofy

Here's some more data. I used Wireshark to watch my connection to the speaker. After it gets the IP address of the speaker using MDNS, itt connects on port 5000. The connection to port 5000 does nothing for about 30 seconds, then closes. During that 30 seconds, iTunes keeps sending around MDNS queries for QM but I think that's Home Sharing. Then it gives me the -15000 error. Ideas?

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