Suddenly unable to play mp4 videos on Windows 10

My windows 10 laptop suddenly stopped properly playing mp4 video files.

The error message states that

Unable to play the file. 
It's possible that this item's file format is not supported, 
the file extension incorrect, or the file data may be broken. 
0xc00d36c4

My laptop is equipped with Windows Media Player, and even though I've been able to play video files without problem until yesterday, it suddenly stopped working.

On the other hand, there was no problem opening and playing wmv video files. I tried installing another media player and open some of the mp4 files and that worked. But when I tried to add those mp4 videos via my Windows Movie Maker it couldn't properly read the video files.

This is problematic because I want to edit videos with the movie maker, and I want to get it work again.

What would be the fix for this?

By the way, my Windows Movie Maker is not the latest version. I think I purchased it around September of 2017.

Installing a codec pack should fix this.

Try K-Lite Codec Pack Basic.