I have an AVI file which when i first opened it, played fine. then upon restart, windows media player tells me i need to download some codec. so i think to myself ok, well ill just go ahead and download it. As soon as i downloaded the Divx codec (came with player and ect.) i try to play the file, and it plays. As the file is playing, i see a little icon on my taskbar from the codec. Why does this happen? Is there anyway to get rid of it? Is it using up a process? and is there a way to get rid of it? Thanks
The player that is using the codec is a running process while you are using it. You can shut it down when you are finished using it if you are concerned about system resources. Try double clicking the icon on the tray to see what dialog box comes up. Or try right clicking the icon. Different clicks for different programs. It might give you a choice about displaying or not displaying the icon on the toolbar. When you reboot your system does the icon remain/comeback on the tool bar? If so, it has placed itself in your start up config. You can try running msconfig to see what is on your start up. You could remove it from your start up. BUT, here's the rub, once you run the player again and it needs the codecs, it IS going to put it right back on your start up routine again. Because that's how it's programed to do. And you do need the codecs to play the files you downloaded them for. So, you will probably need to shut the icon/codecs down after each use (if you really need to) or let it run (probably not much of a drain) or uninstall the codecs if won't ever need them again.
is there not a way to say just download the codec and let it install itself onto windows media player? so the player then contains the codec? and when windows media player has already downloaded a codec, why does it have to download it again to play the movie again? didnt it install on the first download?
You should have already installed the codec in order to play your file. I thought that's what you said you did. I thought you were asking about the icon that appeared on your taskbar and how to get rid of the icon. I tried to explain about that; how to remove it if you really felt it was necessary because you might not want the icon on the taskbar. Yes, once you have installed the codec your WMP will be able to use it whenever you need it. You will not need to install the codec everytime you want to play the file unless you uninstall the codec for some reason. So, I take it you to mean to use the codec periodically. Just leave it installed. Don't worry about the icon.
sorry to have confused you what i ment was: Why is it that the file could be played 2 days ago without any installtions of a CodeC, and now i have to install a CodeC to play it? i mean should'nt windows media player have downloaded the CodeC when the file played the first time and kept it?
Not sure why it would work one time and then quit. Maybe a file got corrupted. Downloading the fresh files seems to have solved the problem as you can now play the file type you wanted. Computers sometimes do strange things ... For exmple, I have downloaded some .ogg file codecs for WMP and they work fine for me. It never did play that music format before, but now it does. It's been a while and I don't remember if it placed an icon on my taskbar or not. But I do remember that one or more files or programs that I use have placed an icon there at some time. I did have a choice to display the icon on the taskbar or not when I clicked on it (one of the 'options' for that particular program/file). In my case I chose to not display the icon. I have not had any issues playing games that have high resource requirements. Seems that codecs for WMP should not consume much in the way of resources. Happy playing!
