searched the archives and came up with nothing. right now windows media player and ati file player will not open avi files, just avis no problem with mpgs or wmvs. ati player will just hang and windows media player will cause the system to become unstable. also thye WILL open in file EDITORS such as virtualdub. i’ve ran virus scans and came up with nothing. uninstalled codecs and re-installed them, nothing. uninstalled all video related everything and re-installed it after defragmenting the hard drive nothing. what short of re-installing weindows should i try next?the os is win 98 on a low end p3 if it makes any diffrence.
Do you have the codecs for AVI files installed?
yes.
You could try downloading GSPOT. It’s a little program that will tell you if you have the correct codec installed to view a movie file.
Just 'cos it’s an .avi file doesn’t meran that you have the correct codec installed.
If the files open in VirtualDub, that’s a good sign that you have the right codecs installed. It might still be a good idea to run GSpot, though - it’ll tell you whether you have the right codecs and whether DirectShow (which WMP uses) is able to render it correctly.
okay gspot says 4 compatable vido codecs and 3 audio. for the file i’m actually trying to open and same thing for the other avi files.
What happens when you click Render in the “DirectShow Render” section?
rendering successful! but the file players still wont open it
Huh. Sounds like a problem with the players. If you’ve uninstalled ATI Multimedia Center and Windows Media Player and reinstalled them, and it still doesn’t work… try installing Winamp, maybe?
Just in case it really is a DirectShow problem, you could install the latest DirectX (9.0c), and/or run the DirectX diagnostics (start | run, “dxdiag”).
Try downloading this small video player.
VLC media player available at http://www.videolan.net/.
There isn’t much that it can’t play.