Sudden problem playing video with WMP. Pls help

[Guest]

I've encountered a mysterious problem that has drastically affected the
enjoyment of my computer. Please help if you can.

Starting yesterday, I noticed that most video files (about 90%) stopped
playing correctly on my computer. This occurs whether the video is streaming
from an internet source or played directly from a file on my hard drive.

The affected files are .avi, mpeg, mpg, wmv, asf

When played the files are slow and choppy and the sound is full of pops and
cracks. Video files without sound and audio files seem unaffected.

This occurs when files are played through Windows Media Player (10) or
RealPlayer (v.10). Quicktime Player appears to be unaffected.

The files themselves have not been corrupted. I was able to prove this
because I can play the very same files remotely with the same programs (WMP10
and RP10) from a second computer on my Home Network.
Also, files streamed from the internet are affected as well. For example if
I try to watch a news video or a moive trailer the sound is significantly
degraded when played through WMP or RealPlayer.

So, something has changed with my windows setup that is affecting the way
the computer handles these files.

To fix the problem I've already tried the following:

Reinstalling video/ audio codecs ( pretty much any one you can think of )
Reinstalling Windows Media Player 10


This is a very strange problem. Pls help if you can.

 

[Cari \(MS-MVP\)]

When was the last time you:

Ran a Disk Cleanup?
Ran a Disk Defrag?
Ran a full antivirus scan with updated signatures?
Ran a good Spyware catcher program?

 

[Guest]

Thank you so much for your attention. I last defragmented the drive last
week. It is very clean. I recently had an issue with a virus. I ran many
scans to clean it up and had to try several before the problem was solved. I
do wonder if in doing all those scans I may have changed something. It is
very strange. Is it possible to have too many codecs? I read that somewhere.
But I am not sure how I might go about removing them.

 

[Guest]

I was able to resolve most of my problem but I am not entirely sure how.

On the advice of another tech support person I temporarily installed a
DivX encoder and player to run some tests.

I realized that I probably didn't want yet another codec pack on my
computer, so I deleted it, but in doing so it messed up some other files so I
tried reinstalling a Codec Pack I had used a while ago. I had some trouble in
clearing out the old installation and reinstalling:

I got the message that two files could not be overwritten and were already
in my C:\Windows\System 32 folder: divxdec.ax and xvid.ax
I deleted them manually and then reinstalled the Codec pack customized to
include only a modest number of codecs and voila:
Windows Media Player began working properly again.

There is still a minor issue with RealPlayer. Apparently it isn't a myth
that installing multiple and duplicate codecs can create a problem. I had
done that a lot in the past without any unfortunate consequences but then
this situation arose.

I wish there were a way to figure out exactly which codecs are duplicated
or interfering with each other to gum up the works.

At least the functionality of my system has been restored. WMP is the
default for most anyway.

I am writing this post to share my experience in case someone else
encounters the same problem.