Sean Anderson

Yep, exact same problem here. And it's bizarre. The hidden instance
actually still plays media - i.e. if I play an MP3 file, it plays - just no
user interface. Same for a movie - but not user interface - not much good
for watching a movie.

And I have done the same thing to resolve - kill wmplayer, restart, and it
works

I am going to check some ideas at home after work, but do you have iTunes
and an iPod? Was it plugged in? What happens if it is not plugged in at the
time you reboot or come out of sleep? Here's my hunch - WMP is starting in
order that it can manage the iPod, but not much point in that because iTunes
will do that for you.

"Rob" wrote:

> When this happens, press Ctrl+Shift+Esc to start Task Manager, select the
> Processes tab and you'll find the wmplayer.exe process is already running
> (although it doesn't appear on the Applications tab). Select it and choose
> End Process.
>
> I've no idea why, but some bug in Vista causes wmplayer to start whenever
> the PC is restarted or brought out of sleep, but without its window showing.
> You can't run two instances of wmplayer, and as Vista assumes you're trying
> to run a second instance when you click Windows Media Player, it silently
> ignores you.
>
>