Virtualdub - "Couldn't locate decompressor"

[Johannes]

Almost every file I try to open with Virtualdub (1.5.10) get's an error like this:

The same happends to xvid and some other codecs.

But I'm sure I have all the right codecs installed. (gspot says I have 2 compatible codecs installed.)

[Poplar]

Almost all files I dealt with recently were either in DivX5 or Xvid. I think few people are still encoding with old Divx codecs, but they might :-0
It looks like it needs one of those old DivX codecs, maybe the good ol' DivX 3.11alpha? Just my guess...

[Johannes]

hmm...

[sammie]

I'd say good guess on Poplar's part (it clearly is looking for the old hacked MS DiVX), but typically any of the newer DiVX codecs should allow reading the older ones.

Are you by chance using Windows XP and have you installed SP2? I think that my experience was typical, in that after installing SP2 a lot of codecs became inoperative. I just went through and deleted most of the old codecs (was time to do some house cleaning anyway), then reinstalled the ones I needed. That cleared up most problems.

[Poplar]

Yep. Good Point. I just clean installed WinXP SP2. I currently only have DivX5.21 and XVid installed. They seemed to be able to handle everything I got. I lost count of how many codecs I had on my old PC, must be over thirty codecs. However, I keep all of them archived, just in case I need them.

[junkmalle]

You can play those old Divx files with media player when a new Divx of Xvid codec is installed, but VirtualDub can't use the new codecs to open the old files. You have to install the Divx 3.11alpha codec.

https://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=188

[Johannes]

It works!

it must have been what you said about sp2. I reinstalled all codecs and now it works.

Windows is shit