How to re-install Default Codecs in Windows XP/2000

When Windows XP and Windows 2000 freshly installed from clean state, normally the default must have codecs to play sound in Windows will be installed for each installation. However, if Windows setup does not find or detect a sound card, these default Microsoft built-in codecs may not installed. When the sound card is added or the sound card driver is installed later on, some cheap low end sound card drivers do not detect the availability of these default codecs and install one if not exist, although most branded or high end sound card drivers such as those from Creative Labs will handle this scenario properly. To re-install these default Codecs follow this steps:

1. Choose Start > Control Panel and double click Add hardware, then click Next.
Click "Yes, I have already connected the hardware" and click Next.

2. Choose Add a new hardware device at the bottom of the list and click Next.
Select "Install the hardware that I manually select from a list (Advanced)", and click Next.

3. Select "Sound, video and game controllers" from "Common hardware types" list and click Next.
Select "(Standard system devices)" from "Manufacturer" and click Have Disk.

4. Click Browse in the "Install From Disk" dialog box and open the folder C:\Windows\System32
Find mmdriver.inf file, select it and click Open then click OK in the "Install From Disk" dialog box. If you see a warning about logo compatibility, just click "Continue Anyway".

5. Now you should finally see a list of audio codecs. Amongst the other items, you should find Microsoft ADPCM Audio Codec and IMA ADPCM Audio Codec. You need to install them one by one so select either of these and click Next. This should re-install the codec (take care, you may need your Windows XP CD).

6. Reboot


- All default audio codecs are in the same list with Microsoft ADPCM Audio Codec and IMA ADPCM Audio Codec; just go to step 5 and select them.
- If you want to (re)install video codecs go to step 3 Select "(Standard system devices)" from "Manufacturer" and "Video Codecs" from "Model" then follow the instructions.


The following table lists the codecs included with Windows:

Manufacturer Model
DSP Group TrueSpeech Software Audio Codec
Intel Indeo R3.1 Video Codec
Indeo R3.2 Video Codec
Microsoft Audio codecs ADPCM Audio Codec
CCITT G.711 A-Law and u-Law Audio Codec
GSM 6.10 Audio Codec
IMA ADPCM Audio Codec
Microsoft Video codecs RLE Video Codec
Video 1 Video Codec
SuperMatch Cinepak Video Codec

Tags: How to install Codecs Windows XP 2000 Microsoft

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