I found this little snippet from the Telegraph's "Ask Rick" useful:
Vista Video Problem
I have just bought a new PC with Windows Vista to replace a Windows XP PC. I am having problems running .AVI video files in WMP on the new PC despite the fact that they ran perfectly on my old XP PC. On the new PC all I get is the sound. What am I doing wrong and how do I configure WMP to run these files properly.
John Waterfall, by email
Windows Media Player in Vista should be able to play most .avi files straight out of the box, but contrary to popular belief .avi is not a video format. It’s a ‘container’ format, which basically means it’s a way of transporting several different types multimedia files. Your PC may lack the necessary coding/decoding software or ‘codecs’ needed to replay the video, or if it has them, they may be corrupt. One way to find out is to use a freeware tool called Gspot (tinyurl.com/c5jzab). This tells you which codecs you have on your PC, and if there are problems with any of them. If your installed codecs get a clean bill of health then I suggest you download the K-Lite codec ‘pack’, which contains just about every audio and video codec you are ever likely to need. It’s free and you’ll find a link to the download at:tinyurl.com/d9efae
