Video Meltdown in XP Home

[Guest]

My system (see below) has completely lost the ability to play video files,
except when they are embedded in banner ads, or played from within a game.
(Battlefield 2's intro video plays fine)

It completely locks up when playing videos of any format in Windows Media
Player (WMP), Quicktime or DIVX. WMP can play audio files, but video is a
lost cause. I've done the following:

Reinstalled direct x 9c,
Installed Updated video drivers
Reinstalled up to date versions of all media players
Scanned for viruses, adware and spyware.

As a last resort, I'm considering a Windows XP repair install. Just
wondering if anyone thinks this is worth a try, or am I on the wrong track?
I'm close to abandoning all hope, renouncing all material goods, and joining
a commune. Ok, it's not that bad, but close!

I suspect that I may have clicked on a link to a .wmv file with some
malicious code, but I have nothing to back that up.

Thanks to anyone who can help.

Specs:
P4 2.4 ghz
1.5 gb DDR333 RAM
Asus P4SDX Mobo
Win XP (all updates)
GeForce 6600GT 128mb RAM (latest drivers)

 

[Guest]

Forgot to mention that I tried rolling back to my oldest system restore
point, which did no good.

 

[Rehan]

I would suggest trying some Windows own format videos (WMV). There
should be one in your My Video folder.

If even this doesnt work then I would suggest installing WIndows Media
Encoder which is a free download from ms. The mere installation of this
program has been reported to fix similar issues previously.

Hope it goes well.

 

[Guest]

Just installed Windows Media Encoder. No change. Some .wmv files will play,
but only if they're of very low resolution, and are only a few seconds long.
Other files that won't play:

..mpg
..avi
..mov

Thanks for the tip Rehan. I'll keep searching for an answer. Any other
ideas would be appreciated.

 

[Guest]

One more thing I just discovered. I can play videos files in Quicktime if I
go into Preferences, and select "Safe Mode (GDI Only)" Quicktime then can
play files of any size or resolution. However, i still can't play quicktime
files in Website-embedded players. Just gets weirder and weirder.

 

[Rehan]

Ok the next suggestion would be to identify whats codecs are there on your
system. get GSpot 2.21 from http://www.headbands.com/gspot/ and install it.

When run the menu View->Installed Codecs show the list of codecs. Any red
lines there?


Another media player worth having as an alternative is Media Player Classic
which can play almost all media types out of the box.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli/

 

[M.L.]

I posted here for help when I had a problem similar to yours. Out of
all the suggestions, a repair install was the only one that worked for
me.