Video player that works in Win 7 Home?

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For some reason, my favourite mp4 player VLC just refuses to run on my Win 7 laptop - it reports that it has crashed every time. I've uninstalled / reinstalled... no go. Had to do a system restore after the last experiment so I'm against spending time on further investigation. (Wierdly, it runs ok on my Win 7 base unit. Maybe a different version of VLC? Anyway, not going to mess about with it any more.)

I've used VLC for so long, I'm not sure what multi-format alternatives are out there in freeware land nowadays. Any suggestions please for a non-bloated player that will play mp4 and a wide range of the usual other formats?
 
I'm using the stock windows media player on my Win 7 laptop no problem and I also have the free version of Real player which does more formats and will download a codec automatically if it can't recognise a file.
 
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