Windows 7: Need Help Setting Up Shark win7 codecs with GOM

I have no personal experience with it other than it installs OLD codecs and this aspect is the source for crashed OS's and at the very least, headaches and grey hair. An experienced user such as yourself may be knowledgable enough not to allow it to install codecs but the average user will allow it thinking it is going to solve their problems, but instead, it creates more problems.

I use the Windows supplied players because my codec installations support playback of all formats in the native players including RealMedia.

HALLELUJAH!

The x64 components did the trick for the thumbnails perfectly. Though found 2 user interface related bugs: when I started the x64 settings app it said "Newer version available 258, would you like to visit site..." while I downloaded the 259 version which is obviously newer. And when I set the SUGGESTED settings it said "All file types have been configured to open with Windows Media Player" and that got me scared for a bit but luckily they still open with GOM. So probably just a notification mistype.

Anyways my video playback is now perfect!

As for to note why most people chose alternative players, Shark, it is because of the serious lack of options that WMP has - especially when faced with MKV and other containers that use soft subs or multiple audio streams. In most players you can right click and have options to select streams or subs, adjust aspect ratio for videos that have a messed up ratio, chose subtitle location for subs that are in an .srt .txt or .sub files (one of the biggest possible flaws of WMP), you can adjust audio stream timing as well as subtitle timing with a button, set hotkeys and shortcuts, and basically edit everything that the player can do.

In WMP the only thing I find appealing is the skin and the glassy touches, but wont be long i reckon till other players find a way to implement alpha channel in the picture files used to make skins. Still the player is an individual choice, and as such there can not be a universal best player (as for codecs I might add now that your pack does it all, and can not be topped by anything out there when it comes to windows 7)

TY all for the responses, I now have thumbnails, smooth playback and I can open any possible video. Thank you so much!