I have sound but NO video in ANY media player

[sn0zc0r3]

Hello!

My brother called me over to look at his computer to see why he couldn't get any video to play. I had him try to open the video file in multiple media players (WMP, QT, VLC) and the problem persisted in each one. The specific problem is this: You can hear sound but there is NO video. Also, the computer would become abnormally sluggish, taking forever to pull up the task manager to kill the process for the media player. Once the process was killed, the computer would run just like normal with no hiccups in speed.

I have had him uninstall all codecs that he may have installed, uninstall and reinstall WMP and QT, reinstall his graphics card drivers, and have done a full system scan for virii and spyware with the latest updates for Spybot, Ad-Aware and McAfee Internet Security Suite 2006. After all of that, I have reinstalled ffdshow (10-12-2004) from sourceforge, tweeked numerous settings with the video card and WMP that I read about on other various forums (such as mirror control and overlay options). I've even tried changing resolutions to see if maybe that was a factor.

I was almost sure that it was a simple problem of media players competing for dominance of file types but now I am at a loss of what to do. Suggestions?

Here's the rest of the specs:

Dell Dimension DE051
Celeron CPU 2.53GHz
1.00 gig of ram
XP Home Edition w/ Service Pack 2
Nvidia GeForce 6200

[wolflmg]

Normally if its not showing the video, but playing the sound it's missing a codec.
When I had that problem I had to install DivX, after I installed that I was able to see the video that was playing.

Is the computers speed working fine now?

[sn0zc0r3]

I'll have my brother re-install Divx again. Maybe that will help it.

The slow down problem occurs when I tried to load a video file in a media player. Sound would play, but there wouldn't be any video and the computer would ccrraawwwlll. Once I could get the task manager open and work my way to the media player's process, I would kill it and the computers speed would go back to normal instantly. Hopefully re-installing Divx will help.

Thanks for the advice!