Barebones fix:

First, uninstall ALL codecs.
Next, Download the original MPC. Pick one of two versions available: XP and 98me, zip or 7z compression. Extract .exe file and open MPC. You should see the a player with menu bar, blank screen area showing “321″, and play buttons. Exit MPC.
Then, download and install ffdshow. Try the 06-17 release first.
Finally, open MPC. Drag and drop a video into player. If there’s sound but no video change output settings (see above) and your good to go.

For those who want the newest and latest, a new group is handling ffdshow called ffdshow tryouts.

I tried lots of time to uninstall k-lite codec pack and reinstall a newer version. this time I removed the old one, along with WinAmp and installed k-lite mega codec pack 3.8.0.

now the player consums about 50% CPU and 4,180KB of memory and just hung like that, not displaying the gui or anything.

working on Windows XP on IBM T60 laptop. i know that it runs just fine on other laptops of my colleagues.

thanks in advance.

“AfxSocketInit is an MFC command called used to initialize WinSockets for network communication. Your programs are trying to connect to the internet as part of the registration process and failing when they detect that your machine doesn’t support the TCP/IP communication protocol. Get your computer connected to the internet, or even a local network TCP/IP network, and it should work fine.”

Source: Y!,

Which means, check your net connection and settings. As a last resort try a system restore or reinstall OS because some necessary files may have gotten deleted, corrupted, etc. There are cases where updates bring up the socket error.

Fix: View>Options>Playback>Output
try selecting output to direct7 or 9

Source: doom9