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Windows Media Player suddenly quit playing AVI files

My Windows Media Player suddenly quit playing AVI files. I've verified that the file associations are correct but when I try to play an AVI file I still get an error that says the media format is not supported. I think it may be a registry problem but have no idea where to look.
One quick way to fix complicated WMP problems is just to reinstall WMP over itself. The player can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/9Series/GettingStarted//home.asp -- reinstalling it will force all file extensions and associated components to be re-registered. If you want to attempt to troubleshoot the problem manually, there is a very good on-line resource for troubleshooting WMP problems: http://www.nwlink.com/~zachd/pss/pss.html, which contains a great many tips not explicitly documented by Microsoft. I have managed to solve several very thorny problems using this guide.

This was first published in August 2004

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