AVI playback corrupted

[PrayForDeath]

Recently my AVI playback got messed up. Whenever I download a trailer or a .avi video file, and try to play it, the screen of the video shows a mess of colors and stuff, but the sound is good. That's on WMP; Quicktime takes 100% CPU and doesn't work, and RealPlayer shows either a black screen or flickering images. So any .avi file is basically not viewable.
Can anyone tell me what to do to fix this problem?
Thanks

 

[PrayForDeath]

bump

 

[n7]

Codec conflicts is my guess.

If you have installed any codecs manually, try to uninstall them, & reinstall.

Maybe first try a system restore if it was working before.

 

[cubby1223]

google search ffdshow, grab it from sourceforge, and install it. should correct the problems.

 

[PrayForDeath]

Wow, ffdshow fixed my problem! But am curious, what is it exactly? A codecs package? And why did I need it in the first place?