AVI files are the native movie files which was first introduced with Microsoft with the launch of Windows 95; which these days are one of the very popular formats because of its highly compressed files size and a good quality. These days several videos which we download from internet comes in AVI format.

But sometimes the problem begins when we try to play them via Windows Explorer because as soon as we open the folder with the AVI file in the folder; system crashes or stopped working and we have to restart it. While the same avi files seems to work when opened through any media players like VLC or any other; even the Windows media player does the job.

Have you ever came across such a problem; if yes then here is both cause and solution.

Since from the launch of Windows XP, Microsoft has enabled the live preview of the most of the file extension we generally use like  in image category JPG, BMP, PNG etc and in the video category MPG FLV and AVI includes. This is where the problem begins; at the time you open a folder with AVI file in the list and your folder seems to be in thumbnail mode; windows try to get a thumbnail preview but it fails to do so; result is in a system crash. This happens just because of a program error.

Now what can be done to cure it? Though there is no patch till date I have found but a simple solution may work for you just disabling the live preview of AVI file using thr following DLL fix.

Go To Windows Key> run and in the command windows type

regsvr32 /u shmedia.dll

Hit enter (It will diasable the media preview) but in  case if you want to re-enable it type the following code and hit enter in the run window

regsvr32 shmedia.dll

Hope this would work for you…. enjoy