Fix For Windows Media Player AVI File Problem

During the course of creating my first anime music video, I finally found a solution to a long nagging problem. The problem was that a while back, Windows Media Player stopped playing AVI files. Opening an AVI in Windows Media Player (WMP) would result in a blank screen and nothing. I scoured forums and web sites, and found nothing except the possibility that it was a codec issue. It was particularly frustrating that Microsoft itself did not have any useful information. Afterall, if anyone has the the resources to find and resolve conflicts with Media Player, it’s Microsoft.

Finally something said in a forum concerning this problem lead me to a solution. I noticed DirectVobSub would run when trying to play AVI’s in WMP. So I figured that maybe it needed to be updated. I updated it, but the AVI’s still wouldn’t play. So I installed ffdshow and uninstalled DirectVobSub, still no luck. But I noticed that a copy of VSFilter.dll was still in Windows\System32. It was apparently an old copy from the earlier DirectVobSub installation. Once I deleted this, AVI’s would now play in WMP!

So I can only guess that VSFilter.dll and Windows Media Player do not get along well together. I haven’t had any more troubles with WMP since getting rid of the offending file. I hope this will be useful information for anyone else who is having problems playing AVI’s in Windows Media Player.