When I try to access mpg and avi files by double clicking on the file, the hard drive head seems to be searching for something but nothing happens. I get the same result from my backup which is on another harddrive. I can access the files from the Dos prompt. Is this a registry problem? If so what can I do to fix this? Thanks

If the files aren't playing at all, try reinstalling Windows Media Player (download it from Microsoft's site). If the files play but just take very long to load, you might need to delete the "cache" which Media Player keeps of files you've played previously. If the cache is very big, it'll take progressively longer to load files since WMP will examine this cache each time you try to load a video (the file name I believe is "WMPLAYER.DAT" or something similar; use Google to find out more about this problem).

The problem I am having I do not think is due to a Windows Media Player problem. The reason I say is that when I go to the DOS prompt and type in the name of an AVI file, it plays ok in Windows Media Player. When I try to go to the directory with Windows Explorer, I get into some sort of a search problem-the hard drive heads seem to be looking for something it can not find. In order to get out of this I have to shut my machine down and reboot. I have reinstalled Windows 2000 but this did not fix the problem.

Right-click on an open space on your task bar and select 'Task Manager' or press ctrl+alt+del and select it from there. Click the 'Process' tab and see if anything is using more than 90% of your resources when you click the file to run it. There could be another process on your machine that is preventing the file from executing in Windows Explorer.