i cant view avi's with windows media player 9 - it will not dl codec... how can I view these frickin' .avi's

I use divxplayer. Or try to search microsoft they have a bundle of codecs.

thanks for link but the damn thing just gets an error.

Try Nemo's codec pack.

I use the DivX codecs.

Here is a nifty program which will give you detailed information about an .avi file. It will tell you what codec the file uses and if you have it installed. You can then search for the codec you need.

./edit Here is a good place to download some of your missing codecs.