Windows 7: BSOD when playing .avi on ATI Card

I have used Windows 7 7000 since I could first get my hands on it and it has never given me a problem. Well, there may have been a small problem, but that was solved by installing the latest Vista 32 driver (at that time) for my ASUS EAH3650 card. Two days ago, I did a clean install of Win 7 7057, and everything seemed fine. Yesterday, I tried playing an .avi file, and I got a BSOD. So, I tried installing the Vista driver mentioned above - BSOD. Then I tried installing the latest ATI beta driver for Win 7 - BSOD. Following that, I downloaded and installed the latest Vista 32 driver for my card - BSOD. So, is anyone else having this problem and how can I solve it without going back to Win 7 7000? Thanks. Further info: This not only involves .avi, but also .wmv and .mkv. These files will not play in Windows Media Player or KMPlayer, whereas they all played in Windows 7 7000. I'm getting really pissed off with Win 7 now.

I always get a BSOD playing AVI's on my NVIDIA 6200...i found a solution. Try running your screen in a lower resolution, set your theme as windows classic, and run the avi in Media Player Classic with the K-Lite codec pack. There maybe another method, but it worked for me. The other alternative is to watch it in linux...which also worked for me.

thanks for your reply, but don't you think your options are rather drastic? I have gone back to build 7000 and everything is fine. What I cannot understand is why I have this problem with both build 7048 and 7057. It doesn't make sense to me. I don't see anyone else reporting this or similar problems with 7048 or 7057.

It's a bit late now, but for future reference to eliminate a driver issue:

Firstly Download and install Driver Sweeper:
Guru3D - Driver Sweeper


Then Uninstall the driver from within device manager, making sure you select the "delete the driver software for this device"

Next go to add/remove programs and uninstall ATI Catalyst install manger.

Re-boot into Safe mode and run Driver Sweeper (run as admin) to clean all ATI references.

Delete any remaining ATI folders, ie C:\ATI ; C:\Program Files (x86)\ATI Technologies ; C:\Program Files\ATI Technologies

Re-boot normally and install the catalyst suite.


If the BSOD's still occur, it's likely the issue lies elsewhere. Either the codec pack, it's player or your sound card.

VLC is a good player that handles pretty much everything out of the box without using codec packs:

VLC media player - Overview