WINDOWS MOVIE MAKER TROUBLE. PLEASE HELP???!!

[lucyshandbag]

I was using windows movie maker fine, everything worked perfectly and then my laptop broke. I had a new hard drive put in and obviously lost everything that was saved to my laptop. I then installed windows movie maker again (as part of windows essentials) and now it isn't working properly. It freezes a bit and when there is a transition the music jumps a lot. The worst thing is though that I can't save my movies. It goes through the whole saving movie process but when I play the movies the screen is just black. The audio is there but no clips, just a blank screen. I've read things about codecs but I don't understand computers very well. Any ideas on how I can fix this problem or what might be causing it? I'm using windows 7 btw. Thanks

[bazwillrun]

sounds like a couple of problems, nothing serious but annoying all the same.

first off you say you have installed Win 7, make sure its got all the latest graphics driver updates etc

to sort out your codec problems download K-lite codec pack
http://codecguide.com/download_kl.htm

the Basic pack at the top of the page should be ok.

I would also uninstall and then re-install WMM and see if its any better.

what are you using to playback your videos ?
you may want to try d/loading and using VLC player, totally free and a superb media player
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/index.html

it has various codecs with it and you may find you can play your vids without the K-lite pack