Resolved AVI causes crashes

My computer is Windows XP Home, Sp.3 I have quite a number of avi, mpg, etc. files in my computer. In the past I have never had any problems running these files in Windows Media Player, Win DVD or any other player. I recently rebuilt all the software due to a system crash. Since then I have not been able to play any of the avi files in any player, and when I do try to play them the software and sometimes the computer will lock up and I will have to use Windows Task Manager to get going again. Although I have never had any problems relating to codecs, I did install instacodecs and that did not help. MPG files play ok and if I convert the avi files to mpg with AnyVideoConverter they play fine. Somehow this sounds related to codec, but how?

What has happened?

 

Thanks for your response. The problem is more serious than I originally thought. I have a number of slide/video programs for showing on TV. None of these with an avi file in them will open. In addition to that, if I do a search for *.avi in Explorer, as soon as it finds one it either locks up the search, locks up Explorer or in some cases the entire computer. I will try your suggestions and see what happens.

 

Your suggestions worked beautifully! I uninstalled the instacodecs pack and installed the K-Lite Codec Pack and now everything works--at least as far as I can tell. I didn't try the start-run routine. Didn't want to mess with success.

What I don't understand is why was this necessary? I have had several computers over the years and basically do the same things with all of them and never have had this sort of thing happen before.