Trouble with *.wmv

*.wmv files will open and begin to play in my Windows Media player on Window Vista; however, during the video I will receive the error:

"Windows Media Player cannot play the file. The Player might not support the file type or might not support the codec that was used to compress the file."

the video crashes and will restart again from the beginning if requested to do to, but will crash again at some point throughout the video.

I have received this error from multiple *.wmv so this is not an isolated case.
Also my VLC player will not play *.wmv files.

Any ideas on what to do here?

Try installing CCCP it fixed every issue I ever had :) Hope this helps K