Explorer and Internet Explorer crashes on Windows 2000 with Error 0x0000009c

Just got the chance to travel back in time. Yesterday, I checked a Windows 2000 machine (hey copyright Microsoft 1985-1999) with the following issue:

Opening a movie or audio media file, e.g. avi, wma, wmv, mpeg, mpg, etc. in the Windows Explorer (and only there, on the desktop it works perfect) pops up a window that memory access failed with code 0x0000009c. Afterwards, a warning popup occurred, holding the information that Microsoft Internet Explorer (this is version 6) has crashed and maybe a restart of the computer solves the problem.

To cut the long story short, Windows 2000 enables folder design containing preview code, i.e. the Internet Explorer is used to render a HTML template containing object code for embedding the Windows Media Player (version 9) control class for preview of movies and audio files.

The solution is to reinstall the Windows Media Player 9.