Explorer.exe and codecs

[Coldgunner]

its seems that a video codec keeps causing explorer.exe to reset whenever I browse a folder in the thumbnails view. is there a way of cleanign up my video codecs so that only the ones I need are present? anyone else had the explorer.exe issue?

[Preppy Veteran]

A: What's the crash bucket data?

B: No one other than you can have any useful idea what set of video codecs you really need.

C: Yes, bad codecs are a pretty big problem. Millions of people who have been suckered into downloading bad codecs and/or bad codec packs have had this nightmare as well. It's pretty horrible.

[Coldgunner]

no crash, jsut explorer restarts itself.

[i_was_here]

If you install <snipped>, during installation it removes some (conflicting) codecs for you. I dont know of a standalone program to do this though.

Have you looked through Add/Remove Programs? Some codecs may be listed there.

Edited December 1, 2008 by John S.
that's warez

[Preppy Veteran]

^-- that's warez, d00d

Did you check the Problem Reports and Solutions control panel as the link I pointed you to suggested? I figured my linked write-up of this was better than retyping this again.

What file types are affected?

[Donkey88]

One solution to this problem is going to start, then run, and typing "regsvr32 /u shmedia.dll" (without quotes) and hitting enter. What this does is disables avi previews totally, so it won't crash. It also turns off some other, more useful functions, like mp3 data and things, so it's only a temporary fix.

Filmerit, looks like it might help at least FIX the codecs, removing them totally might be a bit of a pain in the backside, depending on how you installed them.

[Appzalien]

What I have typically found is that it is the xvid codec that causes the crashes 98% of the time, so uninstalling the xvid codec (or if you don't have an uninstall link try reinstalling over itself) will usually stop the crashes. For some reason xvid has a tendency to get corrupted quite easily, any video crash or even audio crashes when the xvid is playing can corrupt the codec.

[theAnimal]

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/mmcomp.html

[soldier1st]

certain players dont require codecs as they already have them, the divx codec should be all you need but if not media player classic should suffice.