when i try to play a movie, all i get is sound but a blank white sceen. Also get a blank white screen when i play avi files with the graphics acelerator set to full. Man, im still kinda wet behind the ears with this so can someone help and school me?

Happened to me also, I found out that i was trying to play an avi file compressed by DIVX. So i just downloaded and installed their codec(u can get it from download.com). I couldnt play DVDs either so I installed Power DVD( 3rd party dvd player) and it somehow installed the codec for media player to play DVDs.

..and there is also another compression codec XVID, u might want to go to their site and download the codec as well.

Hope that helps

Windows media player can use any codec that is properly written and installed by a third party application.

A thing you can do: If you don't have any clue at all of what codec might be used in the video fil you can always download a super codec pack like Nimo's codec pack. Then you can be relatively sure of that you have all the codecs needed.