Viewing .avi files?

I'm new on here and also not the most technically gifted so can anyone tell me why when I open a .avi file it opens in windows medi player and I only get sound, no picture?

Thanks!

try using VLC player.

If for some odd reason you don't like VLC (who knows, there might be someone who doesn't?), once it's downloaded and installed WMP will grab the codec for itself as well and it should cope with videos much better in future.

If you want to delve a little deeper on this rather than adding loads of codecs you may not need then you could always download something like gspot to find out what codec it is (avi is just a holder containing various codecs) and download the appropriate one. Advantage of this is it's there next time you run across a codec issue

I've always used DivX for .avi files and had no problems.