Windows crashes when i try to play any kind of video file

Whenever I try to play any kind of video file, windows will freeze, crash and then restart. At first I thought it was winamp, but it does this with any media player program. This has been occurring for a number of months now but I put up with it, until yesterday when I got fed up and done a format. The first thing I done once the fresh desktop came up was to play a video, it worked perfectly, but I’ve now updated windows and installed all my usual apps and I’ve lost video play back again :(.

I’ve tried the age old routine of upgrading my drivers and reinstalling programs but nothing works. I have all the right codects to. I’m no expert on this but my gut feeling is that something within windows which drive video playback is royally messed up.

These are the media plays I have installed

Winamp 5.11
Windows Media Player 10
Quick Time 7

Any ideas or help would be appreciated:)

Media player classic is a good option to try. Its open source and can be downloaded for free.
I must admit that I am very suspicious of Quick time, whenever I install it the problems seem to start with Windows Media player.

The other possiblity is that you have installed a dodgy codec. Some of the freely available packs can be very problematical.

You might have to just reformat, and plonk things on one by one - it would probably be best to start with anything that is likely to affect video playback. Alternatively, you could uninstall all the video stuff you have (media players, codecs, etc.) and see if that solves the problem.

Mike.

Quick time, apple, why would you want apple software?

quick alternative is a nice cut down option.

VLC is a good option too: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ tends to take more resources.

My guess would be a sound card driver.
I had problems with my newly built A8N-SLI system when playing some games (system locked up entirely) and they went away once I got the latest 64-bit AC'97 drivers installed.

You say you are getting an automatic restart - is there any event in the system log to indicate it was a trapped bugcheck, and any information if you run drwtsn32.exe?

If it is a trapped kernel bugcheck due to a dodgy 3rd party driver, then disable automatic restarts and reproduce the problem to get a static bluescreen instead, it will attempt to identify the driver which generated the exception:
My Computer - Properties / Advanced tab / Startup and Recovery [Settings button] - untick "Automatically restart"

Thanks for your replies. Unexplainably this problem seems to have been sorted somehow. Don't ask how I didn’t do anything special. I uninstalled QuickTime then reinstalled it just like id tried before, I then tried to run a video but the system crashed and restared. Some time later (after giving up trying to get it to work and thus forgetting about it) I played a video again and it just worked for some reason. I’ve been watching some HD Trailers from apple and some other videos with no problem. Kind of odd really. Thanks for ur input anyway, glad it seems to be sorted:).

For some reason azureus does that to my system, although no reboot, screen just goes all wonky like the grahics card has fried, bricked it when it first happened

I've had a similar experience lately - would be using a media player (MPC, MP etc.) to watch vids & it would freeze & if I managed to getto the desktop it would be at some weird very low res. setting.
Tried different codecs, different players - the same.

Seems to have cleared up though in the last few days too ...

i am having a problem like this, i play recorded movies off my digi fine. then when trying to convert/edit them the program just closes.:\

I have the same problem.

you all should try real player great as you can also surf the net at the sametime.
i thinks its something to do with dodgey plugins try updating them. Also do a virus check so that there are no trojans etc. or errors. and try updating windows media player 10 to 11. also right click my computer click on properties click device manager and locate your graphics card check that there are no conflicts. If the problems continues i suggest you check your ram because ram could be the cause to.

holy thread revival!