XviD Files Crash Windows Explorer

I copied some XviD encoded AVI files to a machine without XviD codec installed. Whenever I open the folder containing these files. The Windows Explorer crashes with the following event created in the Application log.

Event Type:    Information
Event Source:    Winlogon
Event Category:    None
Event ID:    1002
Date:        2/2/2006
Time:        12:27:02 PM
User:        N/A
Computer:    MyComputer
Description:
The shell stopped unexpectedly and Explorer.exe was restarted.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at 
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

I was puzzled by this behaviour at first. The default application to handle AVI files is Windows Media Player. Oh! I forgot to mention that the machine is running Windows XP Professional SP2 with all the updates. The Windows Media Player version is 9. My first take is to upgrade the Media Player to 10. However, Windows Explorer still crashes after the Media Player upgrade. My second take is to install the XviD codec. After I installed the XviD codec, the crashes stopped. I am able to browse those files using Windows Explorer without crashing.