icannot open sum of the attathments up on my e mails itb says that windows media player cannot play the file the player mite not support the codec that was used to compress is there anything in simple terms i can do to sort this out? many thanks
You could try downloading the relevant codec(s) but as soon as you think you've got things sorted out, someone will probably send you a file which was compressed with yet another codec.
A far better solution would be to switch to a media player which plays almost any file, irrespective of the codec used.
The player frequently recommended here on AB, as well as on BBC technology programmes, is VLC. It's free and you can download it here: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
hmmm. i've been hearing that certain virus are written into codecs. You might want to be a bit wary of emails asking you to download codecs. My advice would be to download the codec but scan it before you uninstall it.