Just the other day one of my friends had trouble viewing videos in Windows Vista. When she clicked on a video file, she saw the following error message: COM surrogate has stopped working. This happened with every other video file. She asked me for help.

I did some research on the Internet and found out that this happens a lot in Windows Vista and it’s usually caused by NERO software or by some fault in the codec. I suggested to her to uninstall Nero and see whether the error still appears. She did this and later informed me that the error did not show up again. She could view video files without problems.

So, all you need to do is uninstall Nero (Control Panel, Remove a program, find Nero on the list and select Uninstall) or download and install the latest version. If this doesn’t help, try the same with the DivX software.

Another way of resolving this problem is by installing ffdshow. ffdshow is a DirectShow and VFW codec for decoding/encoding many video and audio formats. You can get more information and download the latest version for free here.

Last solution I can recommend is to look for a Windows Vista codec pack, either through Microsoft Web site or through Google. Install it and you shouldn’t have any more problems with codecs.