playing video files using front USB on Solo

Ok done some searching but couldn't find the answer so hope you can help.

Trying to play video files off the USB, I have a solo and using rear USB port for HDD recording and wanna use front USB to play media files.
I have only tried using the Media Player from the BH menu. DO I need to use a plug in??
What formats does the solo play, does it play mkvs

I tried to put in USB HDD into the front USB ,port which had media files to see if they would play.

Then went to media player from menu and could not see the new front USB I can only see the rear USB being used for recording.

Tried to go to device manager to see if I could see the new USB in there but it crashes and reboots

As a rule when connecting and disconnecting a USB do you need to shutdown the box too.

Black hole 1.7.6

Total noob my 1st Linux box

when trying to go into device manager it crashes with a green screen & reboots.

this also happened when I 1st used my HDD to try & record if i would go to device manager it would crash

i then used the usb format wizard to format the HDD for recording & could then see it in device manager.

however if i format the usb that i want to use for playing videos on the vu it then means that when i plug that usb into my pc , the pc doesnt recognise the format of the USB & wants me to format it on the pc

does that make sense

Quote from GeorgeXL

What skin are you using ? If you disconnect the HDD from the box and go to device manager it still crashes ?

sorry not sure what skin i am using how can i check

i am using blackhole 1.7.6.

if i remove the usb i can go into device manager - i tried it with a pen drive & an ext hdd & it did the same thing

for my recording HDD - after i formatted it using the usb format wizard i was able to go into device manager & see it which would suggest that device manager does work.

I'm using one HDD and one USB pen drive which is where I'd like to play the media files from the HDD is 2.5 inch not powered does that matter

Sorry don't know how to use telnet

Had an odd thing happen rebootted box plugged in usb and could see in media player and able to play files no problem. Using the stock media player with bh would you recommend anything else. Could not find how to search in the file e..g wanna move to 50mins into the film