A couple days ago I installed some software to assist me with burning avi files to DVD. Basically, stuff to encode the avi to necessary format to put it onto a DVD. Everything appeared to work fine.

Then, last night I went to play an mpeg file on my computer. It wouldn't work. It would load, but the progress bar would make no effort to move. If I started clicking randomly along the progress bar, one image from the video might pop up and some sound might start playing. I tried opening multiple mpeg files with multiple video players. All gave me the same result. These are mpeg1 files by the way, mostly music video files, but not all.

A quick search on the internet, I found a site that recommended installing FFDShow. I did so. I went into the Configuration and Audio Filter Configuration settings and turned on some of the decoders. Now I could play my mpegs, but if I tried to skip ahead in the video, the audio and video would become desynched. Again, this is for every mpeg video in every video player program.

I've also tried reinstalling the Windows Media Player 9 codecs, which the mpeg1 codec is supposed to be a part of, but nothing seems to make any difference.

Even more fun is now I am occaisionally getting a pop up error:

Microsoft Visual C++ runtime library Runtime error! program
c:\windows\system32\cidaemon.exe R6025 - pure virtual function call

I've tried uninstalling the programs I had recently installed. I've also attempted to use the System Restore to set my settings back a few days. The System Restore always fails. It gives no reason for doing so, just says that it was unable to restore to the restore point I told it to.

Anyone have any ideas? Preferably ones that don't involve reformatting.

I uninstalled FFDShow and haven't gotten the cidaemon error since. However, now I am back to square one. I cannot play mpeg videos at all.

Windows Media Player says it is using MPEG Video Decoder to play the video and MatrixMixer to play the audio, but... nothing happens. It just sits there and doesn't play anything.

sounds like spyware

Hmm, interesting theory. Well I ran Norton anti-virus this morning. It didn't find anything. I've also run Ad-Aware, it didn't find anything but a few cookies. I'm running Spybot now.

Edit: Spybot also didn't find anything worth mentioning.

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/housecall/start_corp.asp

I have Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition (provided to all students at my university). I updated and ran it this morning and it found nothing.

Norton sucks run either trends housecall or pandas
or even get AVG it's free.

I ran house call, but that offered no help either.

Does anyone know the names of the file(s) the mpeg1 codec uses? Maybe one of them has become corrupt or something. Or does anyone have another idea about how I can reinstall the mpeg1 codec (since reinstalling the WMP9 codecs didn't help)?