Windows – How to play AVI and MKV files in Windows Vista Media Center

This is happening cause you have different directshow codecs for X32 and X64, media player will fire up with the x32 version when you click it from the desktop.

However, Windows Media Center runs in X64 mode only, and can not use any x32 codecs. graphstudio has an x64 edition, you could drag your avi onto it to see which codecs it uses to render the video. If a graph can not be rendered then you will need to re-prioritize or install new codecs.

Shark comes with a reasonably good x64 codec pack.

Personally, I would stay clear of X64 media centers, they are not worth the effort I still can not get quicktime streaming to work on x64.

thanks bro i had the same problem and same sound card and it was driving me crazy, i figured out instead of reinstalling you can just go to sound in control panel and when you click it, it will say its not performing properly do you want to disable enhanced functions click yes to that. Now media centre works fine THANK YOU.