How can I keep these videos from crashing Windows every time I try to get to them?

October 11, 2009 5:38 AM

How can I keep these videos from crashing Windows every time I try to get to them?

I found my old flip cam in the closet today and discovered on it a treasure trove of videos from when my dog was just a few weeks old, running around being spastic and other adorable puppy things.

When I tried to open the flip cam in windows explorer to copy these to my computer I get the message "Windows Explorer has encountered a problem and needs to close." So instead I used the built in program on the flip to download them to my hard drive.

However whenever I try to navigate to them on my computer the same thing happens. When I open the folder which contains the folder with these videos in them, I get the "Windows Explorer has encountered a problem" thing again, except now if I don't immediately close Windows Explorer I get another error which says "The exception Integer Division by Zero (0x0000094) occured in the application at location 0x0392dd11."

I'm not quite sure what this means or what to do. I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling my graphics card drivers and video codecs (divx etc) in the thought that maybe that had something to do with it, and so far nothing. Can't really think what else might help. The flip has worked perfectly fine in the past and I've got a lot of videos on my computer that came from it and don't cause these errors.

Can anyone tell me what is going on and how to fix it, so I can save these videos of my pup?

posted by reticulatedspline to computers & internet (7 comments total)

Have you tried not using Windows Explorer? There's of bunch of free alternatives, eg xplorer2, but you could also just start Windows Media Player (or any other player) and use the File > Open dialog to open the file directly. Does this work?
posted by oxit at 5:42 AM on October 11

This is likely caused by Windows trying to generate thumbnails for the videos. Windows loads a codec to create the thumbnail, and the codec is responsible for the crash. The codecs you have uninstalled/reinstalled are likely not the appropriate ones for the videos your camera is creating.

You can disable thumbnails to get around this problem (google for "disable thumbnail previews" + your version of windows for more details). You can also try to determine which codec is responsible for loading the files on your machine and reinstall it.
posted by helios at 5:59 AM on October 11 [1 favorite]

You can also try to determine which codec is responsible for loading the files on your machine and reinstall it.

How would one go about this?
posted by reticulatedspline at 7:00 AM on October 11

If you're using XP, I believe that WMP 6.4 will tell you (start->run->mplayer2). After opening the movie, there's a menu somewhere that gives you details on the file.

Alternatively, you can try downloading this.
posted by helios at 7:10 AM on October 11

Try installing the Combined Community Codec Pack.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 8:37 AM on October 11

Gspot can analyse which codes are needed and will be used for playback (or probably creation of thumbnails). I would advise against installing any coded pack. They tend to mess things up. VLC plays almost any video format without installing codecs.

But really, I think try using an Explorer replacement that does not show thumbnails, thus does not use any coded (or any other plugin), thus might not crash.
posted by oxit at 9:10 AM on October 11

I'd also strongly advise against installing "codec packs". Codec packs account for a large number of media-related crashes like the one you are experiencing now. It's preferable to just download the specific codecs as needed.
posted by helios at 12:15 PM on October 11