Unable to play torrent download video file

Question

I downloaded a movie and when I play it in VLC or Windows Media player - I get text over the movie being played - "Codec Error:Use Windows Media Player" followed by "Aborting video, redirected to Microsoft Codec Download page". The hour long video runs only for 15 seconds and opens a page on some torrent page which asks me to fill a survey form(which is irresponsive) to download VLC player again.

Is there any way I can work around it?

Solution 1

opens a page on some torrent page which asks me to fill a survey form(which is irresponsive) to download

Dubious. Survey filling for a codec is a sure-shot giveaway for spam and email harvesting or other sorts of (drive-by) malware. Stay away from it.

Solution 2

Ok. I found the solution to my problem - http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=64879

These videos are 'hacked' videos that contain scripts which can be executed by WMP only. The purpose of this is to force you to be redirected to another site and/or to download some stuff in the background. If you can't play them in WMP then it's a good sign meaning that your Windows and WMP are correctly patched with the latest security updates.

Anyway you should delete these videos as soon as possible because they may compromise the security of your computer if they are played in WMP.

Comments

[BinaryMisfit]

Comments removed since they were purely speculative and not based on facts.

[harrymc]

@fixxxer: Agreed - looks like a virus. DO NOT play in Windows Media Player! DO NOT download or install anything from this "survey" !!