Playing any media causes crash after Windows Update

I am finding a problem in which after some windows updates, all attempts to play media (any music or video file) will just freeze the application (doesn't matter which player used- even the windows startup and exit won't play the WAV sounds, and my browser will crash if i try and watch an FLV file), i always manage to fix it by restoring to before the update.

I am running a DELL 17 Studio laptop about 1 year old, Windows Home premium 7, 64-bit. I am not that technical so please don't ask questions about my hardware (as it's clearly an O/S issue),

Best regards
David

David,,enter cmd and type chkdsk/f and see if you pick up any errors...

otherwise i'd say download the latest Ccleaner,install,don't change any settings and run both the cleaner and registry after analysing...L8a

Let me know!!And remember your reboot!!

thank-you so much, i'll try that tonight, my naive hunch was that it was some sort of disk error aye,
will let you know.
D

hey, it worked!
thanks
ran the cleaner utility and then did chkdsk- it came up with no problems- then rebooted
next time i will try the cleaner util first

its an intersting recurrent fault - esp as it prevents playback of online flv videos AND seems to disable things like the dell application which alters the power/screenlighting/volume on the desktop- maybe this is a flash or silverlight app... anyway cheers