AVI playback all of a sudden stopped working

Weird issue here. Some of my avi's just stopped being able to play on one of my Windows 7 machines. Weird part is; if I connect to that machine via remote desktop the videos work!

I tried reinstalling ffsdshow tryouts and even creating a new account. This machine was working fine not to mention all the other machines are still playing them fine. Some of the other avi's still work and all my mkv's still work fine.

However I keep getting "Windows Media Player cannot play the file. The Player might not support the file type or might not support the codec that was used to compress the file" whenever I select certain avi's. Like I mentioned though, if I connect to that machine via remote desktop they play fine. Any ideas?

Rugger1 said:

Weird issue here. Some of my avi's just stopped being able to play on one of my Windows 7 machines. Weird part is; if I connect to that machine via remote desktop the videos work!

I tried reinstalling ffsdshow tryouts and even creating a new account. This machine was working fine not to mention all the other machines are still playing them fine. Some of the other avi's still work and all my mkv's still work fine.

However I keep getting "Windows Media Player cannot play the file. The Player might not support the file type or might not support the codec that was used to compress the file" whenever I select certain avi's. Like I mentioned though, if I connect to that machine via remote desktop they play fine. Any ideas?

Hi and welcome
when you connect via rdt it uses the codecs on that machine not the one that is broken. What format doesn't play? has anthing else happened on the broken machine, like a crash, or uninstall of an app?

Ken J+

No crashes or anything that I'm aware of. It's only certain avi's that stopped working, and only on that one machine. Some avi's do still work. All four of the machines have codecs installed following the guide MKV's for Minimalists on Windows 7 web page (MKVs for Minimalists on Windows 7). The other three machines are not having any issues and can play all avi files.

Finally figured it out. When I had installed the Creative drivers for my Creative Audigy 2 ZS it ran an update where it wanted to install programs called Creative Alchemy and Creative MediaSource 5. The culprit was Creative MediaSource 5. I attempted to restore to previous point before MediaSource was installed but still no good. I have to restore to the point before the installation of the Creative audio drivers. At this point my AVI's started working again. I reinstalled only the audio drivers and Alchemy and everything is still working smooth.

Note to creative users: Creative MediaSource may screw up your ability to play SOME avi's through Windows Media Player and Windows Media Center.

Another update. When I went into the Creative Audio Console and changed my speaker setup from 2.0 to 5.1 the avi's stopped playing again! I changed it back to 2.0 and then they would play. So I went to Windows control panel and when I selected Sound a message popped up saying:

Windows has detected that audio enhancements for the following devices are causing problems:
Speackers (Creative SB Audigy 2 ZS (WDM))
Would you like to disable Driver Enhancments for this device?

I selected yes and then selected 5.1 from the Windows Speaker Setup box and the avi's are still working.

It amazes me how buggy Creative's software is! Hope this information helps somebody else!