WinXP errors with video

Okay, anyone else have this problem?

After doing a service pack 2 update, whenever I even click on a video (I want to say WMV files but I'm not sure)  I immedietly get an error message saying that explorer "enountered an error and needs to close."  I've noticed this is more apparent when I load up a video directory and it's set to "thumbnail" mode.  What the hell is causing this error, and how can I fix it?

Weird. Have you tried the MS knowledge base?

In the meantime disable thumbnailing for videos; it's pointless anyway.

Try reinstalling/upgrading Media Player first. If it still fucks up, do a system restore and try SP2 again.

Whatever decoder you're using doesn't like Explorer and its video previews. Solution: turn off thumbnailing. It's got nothing to do with WMP or SP2 or the system in general.

If Explorer can't handle a codec it should just ignore the video and not create a thumbnail for it (using the icon for the associated program instead), not crash outright. Considering the original poster's problems are not always caused by the thumbnails, and that the problems only occurred since applying SP2, it points to either explorer.exe (or a related component) or some component of Media Player getting fucked up. Reinstall Media Player, if that fails, system restore, if that fails, repair install.

>If Explorer can't handle a codec it should just ignore the video and not create a thumbnail for it (using the icon for the associated program instead), not crash outright.

Not all decoders support explorer, and some blow up when it tries to invoke them. That's what this is. As for why it only started after SP2, I don't know. But WMP is a completely different thing. Explorer just uses directshow hooks, reinstalling WMP will do nothing.