windows media technologies

every time i try to play mpegs, video clips i get a message stating that "windows media technologies is not compatabile with this version of windows,visit microsoft website for information".when i go to the site there isn't any available resources for help.i have a windows media player,realone player and quiktime alternative but denied ability to download the clips with the above message.this just started recently and i never had any problems in the past.computer is windows xp.any body have this similar problem before?any help would be greatly appreciated.

What kind of movies they are? I mean the movie file name extension?

like little video clips.it started when i tried to download a clip over in the boxing/fighting forum on this site.but its not just this site its any clip from a link or any mpeg. sorry, not too cpu literate. my cpu came w/a media player installed on it i quess but when this started i thought it had to be upgraded so i tried to download windows media player 9.0 but the same message popped up during the download.i thought my winXP was compatible

There is a WMP 10 out, Make sure you keep your computer updated.. Turn your "automatically update" on. You can make it so it will tell you that there are updates but not download them so you can look to see what they are first...

Secondly, have you installed SP2 ? I found i couldn't do somethings since i updated with that, so i just went to Add/Remove programs and uninstalled it. Now everything is fine..

I reeinstalled widows XP and now it says I need a decoder. I dont want to pay for one. It wont let me play DVD's. Any quick fix without paying for it

Do you mean codec?

Windows Media Player cannot play the DVD because a compatible DVD decoder is not installed on your computer.

This is the message I get so no I don't mean codec

You need a Video Decoder An MPEG-2 decoder is software that allows you to play DVDs and files that contain video content that was encoded in the MPEG-2 format you need to get PowerDVD or some other dvd player and it will have the right Codec for WMP to play the files. So to answer your question I don't know of any free dvd player software.

Yeah I know that is what I need. Just trying to find a free copy out there. I guess I will download the trial version and look for a free serial # I can use