K-Lite Codec Pack 3.01

Last year I needed to reformat my PC as part of general house cleaning (Microsoft ActiveSync went bonky and would not work after several attempts to remove, reinstall, etc.). Since I had to reformat the hard drive anyway, I decided to move from XP Home Edition to XP Media Center Edition. The upgrade went well and the freshly installed ActiveSync worked again (or at least as well as one can expect this ill behaved software to work). One thing that got lost in the shuffle was the DVD CODEC that came with the PC. Media Center Edition didn't include a CODEC. My interim solution was to use the Open Source VLC Media Player for those infrequent times I actually want to watch a DVD on the PC. Today, however, I decided I really wanted to see a DVD using Media Center. I found and downloaded K-Lite Codec Pack 3.01 which claimed to contain CODECs for 99% of movies on the Internet. After installing it Media Center could play the commercial DVD I stuck in the drive.

One side effect is that the old Media Player 6.4 was installed and set as the default media player. I could switch it back to Media Player 11. But, I might leave it at 6.4 since it seems to startup faster and has a cleaner simpler interface that WM11.