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Ever since watching a .MOV file with Windows Media Player on my pc, I am sporadically getting the below error. Does anyone know the cause of this, or a good way to fix it? This link has a hotfix, but it only applies to Windows XP.

Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library
Runtime Error!

Program: C:\Windows\system32\DllHost.exe      

Please contact the application's support team for more information.    


I am running Windows 7 with all updates installed.

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3 Answers 3

up vote 3 down vote accepted

I haven't seen this on Windows 7, but seen it on XP and it is usually directly related to having faulty / damaged / bad codecs installed on your machine.

If you have recently installed any codecs, especially any of the multi packs that are available online, I highly recommend you uninstall them.

(Also, not directly helpful, but if the above doesn't help, you can always try using VLC Media player instead, I find it to be the best player!

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+1 for bad codecs, +1 for vlc. Ca't vote twice though. Bah! –  A Dwarf Oct 28 '09 at 18:46

The .mov videos are in a proprietary Apple format whose secrets are jealously guarded by Apple. Many Apple codecs have non-Apple implementations which are pretty good, but not perfect, which is probably the problem you're encountering.

The only video player that's guaranteed to play .mov videos correctly is Apple's QuickTime. You can download it here (be sure not to download the version with iTunes).

You can either use the QuickTime player to watch your .mov videos, or you can still continue to use Windows Media Player. But in this case you'll need a product that makes available to WMP all the QuickTime codecs currently installed. A free product that does that is available here : QuickTime DirectShow Source Filter.

Before installing all these products, I suggest that you uninstall any doubtful codecs package that you may have already installed. After having verified that .mov files do work correctly, you can afford to install a well-known package such as the latest version of K-Lite Codec Pack.

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this article mainly speaks to xp/2000, but this may be it: article

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