Media Player Won't Disploay Video & Locks Up

I've recently purchased an IBuyPower Battalion 101SC gaming laptop equipped as follows:

Win XP Home/SP1/SP2/all critical updates
Norton System Works '04
P4C 3.4GB CPU/800MHZ FSB/HT
Not sure what the MB is "but" the chipset is an Intel 865PE
1024MB of DDR400 notebook RAM
ATI 256MB Mobility Radeon 9700 Pro
Realtek AC97 audio chip
2 60GB 5400RPM HDDs/Promise FastTrak 100 RAID controller in a RAID 0 cfg
1680x1050 wide screen WSXGA LCD screen

All drivers are up to date to the best of my knowledge and I'm using a video driver mod called Dhmodtool 2.0b to allow me to use the standard ATI 4.8 Cats with my mobility video chip.

My problem is I downloaded a copy of a game video clip (BF1942DC.wmv) from the Uncle_CT Squad site. Earlier this year I DLed this same file to my desktop and viewed it numerous times (on the older desktop) with no problems.

When I played the new video clip copy, on the new rig listed above-Media Player played the soundtrack OK, but only displayed the opening text graphic and nothing further of the video. When I used the MP stop button, MP wouldn't respond (soundtrack continued OK-no video), so I used the Task Manager to close MP. The TM advised me MP was not responding (DUH!) and my CPU usage was 57%. The TM stopped the soundtrack (started endless looping on the last sound byte played) and my comp hardlocked. I had to press my comp's on/off button for 5 sec to shut it down.

Since then my MP won't play two other game videos (one in .mpeg and the other in .mov format) that it played fine prior to trying the .wmv file. It exhibits the same syptoms: Soundtrack OK, no video, sound starts endless looping upon pressing stop button on MP, TM indicates high
cpu usage and MP not responding. Using TM to shut down MP hard locks comp.

BTW: I've tried playing the.wmv game clip on Real Player, QuickTime Player, and DivX Player; they all play the sound track fine but show no video though they shut down OK with no hard locking. The .mpeg & .mov game videos play fine on on these media players. MP still plays audio files just fine.

I've DLed MP 10 from Microsoft and re-installed it twice hoping it would overwrite whatever is wrong with my MP. No luck! I've also DLed and installed MP Hotfix KB832353 (which addresses MP not playing audio or video from certain media files and exhibits high CPU usage) and MP update KB 828026 which also seemed relevant to my problem (though I don't recall exactly what it addressed).

Of potential relevance to my MP issue is when I run NSW One Button Check Up I routinely find one "Program Integrity" problem-described as: Invalid application path C:\ProgramFiles\Adobe\Acrobat6.0\Reader \plug_ins \Multimedia/InternetKeyboard Driver VeR8.15YourApp.exe

I also routinely get find 2 missing "Program Files" problems C:\ProgramFiles \CommonFiles\InstallShield\Professional\RunTime\0701\Intel\32\DotNetInstaller
.exe cannot access a necessary file, "mscoree.dll"

The second missing Program File details reads exactly the same except the 0701 number ahead of \Intel\32 is 10\01.

Any ideas or suggestions (other than throwing the comp out the window to let it know who's boss LOL!) Thanks!

 

this is what I WOULD TRY check to see if the latest codecs are install + try and install wmp 9 to see if this fixes problem BUT as i said this is what i would try imo

 

I use DivX codecs to get my media player to show the video.
Find the free version
upon installation it will have a box to install divx pro for 6 months uncheck that and also it will prompt to install Google tool bar ---->your choice on that one