This has been an ongoing problem for me but recently my way around it failed as well so I'm out of options.

First, my specs to get them out of the way. I'm on Windows XP Home Edition, 1.8 GHz processor, 512 MB DDR RAM, video card is an Nvidia RITA TNT2 Model 64.

As for the nature of the problem. For some time now, long enough for me to not remember when it started, my normal Windows Media Player hasn't been able to play most, if not all, video files I've attempted to play on it. Even wmv files dont work on the program anymore. I suspect a bad codec download as I have tried upgrading and reinstalling the program and neither brought me a SOLUTION. This problem also interferes with web browsing since any embedded video on websites encounters the same problem, except instead of an error message that it cant play the video, it just crashes Internet Explorer outright.

To get around it I downloaded Media Player Classic, which played anything I threw at it... until recently anyway. I must have downloaded a codec that didn't agree with it because today it became unable to play large video files and sucked up a massive ammount of CPU, averaging about 90% according to Task Manager. The video would be a black screen, and if I left it long enough audio would play, but never the video. I uninstalled the most recent codecs I downloaded and while it has allowed the program to open the videos again, it still takes up a lot of CPU (from 40% to 60%) and some videos crash the program after only a minute of playing, a minute where the video quality slowly degraded as it ran out of memory, apparently.

I'm not aware of anything else I downloaded that might have interfered with Media Player Classic's functioning, but it's left me without a way to view most of the video content on my COMPUTER and on the internet. I guess what I'm looking for is a solution, someone who's had a similar problem, a program that could identify the bad codecs on my system... or a way to BYPASS it again such as a different video program that could take over for Media Player. If anyone has a solution like this or knows how to fix these problems please let me know soon. Thank you.First of all, uninstall any codecs etc that you've picked up in the past. Now have a look at this post and FOLLOW the instructions CAREFULLY. Once we know you're clean, we'll deal with your codec problem.