I am having problem with Vistas Windows media player. I have 2 years worth of videos that I had on my old computer (Windows XP) I copied these all to my new computer (Vista). Windows Vista Media player will not play any of the videos. Talking with various support people I was told I need codecs for MPEG-2 to be able to play the videos in Windows Media player. Therefore I downloaded Vista Codec Package 4.7.3 (Freeware) which states it is suppose to make Windows Media player play and format. Therefore after downloading those codecs I try to play my videos on Windows Media Player and still get the missing codec error. Any way to make these work on Windows Media Player so I do not have to uses one player for that and another player for this. I prefer to just use Windows Media Player for everything if possible...

So you said you downloaded it but did you install it? This sounds like a stupid question but I just wanted to make sure as you only have 1 post here and I'm not sure what level of experience you have.

Personally, I use Combined Community Codec Pack. If you google it, you'll find the download site. Install it and it will play your videos.

But there are others like k-lite..

I really got sick and tired of having to download a new player or plug-in every time I got something new from the internet. Then my Software Guru put me on to the K-Lite Codec Pack.
Since then, I've updated it on a regular basis and I've deleted Real Player, Quick Time and all the other bloatware off of my computer.

http://www.codecguide.com/download_kl.htm

Try it.... I think you'll like it.

Cheers Mate!
Andromeda43