If windows media player plays the Audio but no Picture this points to a divx codec issue.

If your getting no audio and no picture then you may have a very old version of Mediaplayer installed.

The avi files on this site are encoded to use Mp3 for Audio (which should have been installed with Mediaplayer) and DIVX for the Video.

Things to try:

Upgrade your Windows Mediaplayer : Link

Make sure you have the latest DirectX installed (Start, RUN, type "DXDIAG" without the quotes and return) it should be at least Directx9. If not Link

If you still have no luck, then you have issues with Windows which while fixable are difficult and time consuming. A format and re-install will be quicker.

VLC is known to work on systems that have issues so it may be worth a try Link


It should be noted that some mediaplayers eg Nero will play some part of the AVI, where it be the Audio or Video this due to the player having a inbuilt decoder (Codec) but requires a 3rd party codec to decode the rest.

Having re-read your post It seems mediaplayer did'nt play anything, while if the mediaplayer was a least a late version 8 it should have played the audio (MP3) and displayed an error about "Missing codecs etc".


You should avoid installing "Codec Packs" only every install codecs that you really need.