Vista - Windows Media Player won't start

Stap me vittles! Worked first time. That simple.

Out of interest is there a 64 bit version of media player on the cards?
--
Dave G


"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.
>
>

There's already one on Vista 64 bit systems in the
c:\program files\windows media player
directory. 3rd party codecs really haven't caught up to 64bit yet, though.
--
Speaking for myself only.
See http://zachd.com/pss/pss.html for some helpful WMP info.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
--
"drg" <drg@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:4601B58E-E972-4D1D-A57E-A6E1CC09256F@xxxxxx

Rob;3029639 Wrote:Here's how I solved this bs wplayer.exe problem. It was hogging up too
much memory in my case for an app that is not even running. Just create
a small batch script to kill the process and schedule the batch script
to run after you log in. The script is this:
-echo START
date /t
time /t
For /F "tokens=2" %%n in ('tasklist ^| Find "wmplayer.exe"') Do Set
task=%%n
echo %task%
TaskKill /PID %task%
Set task=
echo END-
and I named it "kill_wmplayer.exe" and saved it into my documents
directory. It could be made shorter because some of the echos were for
debuging while creating it. I also redirect the output to a logfile so
I can see when it works or not, but you don't need to do that either.
The scheduler was the hardest part! I finally had to make it trigger
after I log on and then I make it delay 1 minute and restart every 1
minute for 5 minutes because the wmplayer.exe may not have already
started when the scheduler runs. And making the script start on
startup was a joke with all the bs security issues - and I'm admin!

Oh, and the GOM player idea may be a much better played - but it does
not solve the wmplayer from starting up when the computer is turned on!
However, from your suggesstion I am going to start using the GOM
player! I did a little research and it does sound better than
wmplayer. Just the fact that Microsoft is cramming their player down
my throat and preventing me from uninstalling it is enough reason for
me to use another player.

Good luck!


--
FlaDude
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Hey there, I've got the same problem, i can't get media player to open when I
click on media files. I have to shut it down in task manager before I use it,
and even then I'll have to repeat that process if I want to open it again
later. Is this a bug? Is there a patch to fix it? If I open task manager it
sometimes doesnt want to shut WMP down at first .. it dissapears and appears
on the task manager flashing in and out .. maybe catching up because i tried
to open it a few times ..
...all in all .. most irritating

"zachd [MSFT]" wrote:

This is a bug in Vista and so far I have not seen a fix. Whats most
irritating is you can't even uninstall WM! Windows is so bad. If I
didn't need it for work (most large companies use it) I would use Linux
full time. However, because of other BS problems and compatibility
issues that cannot get resolved, I am waiting for a new hard drive for
my laptop and I am downgrading (if thats what you want to call it) back
to XP. I will keep the current harddrive with Vista as a fall back in
case I can't get all the drivers for this laptop (dv2315) or in case
Vista finally corrects its issues.

Good luck with the WM problem!


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FlaDude
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I can't reproduce your failure, so I don't have a lot to go on here.
The fact that it's not crashing is somewhat interesting but not helpful
other than as a light scoping of the problem.

Paolo said that running:
regsvr32 jscript.dll
from a CMD.exe prompt Run As Administrator fixed up this issue for him -
does this fix you up?

What changed on the system prior to this happening?

--
Speaking for myself only.
See http://zachd.com/pss/pss.html for some helpful WMP info.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
--

"Gino" <Gino@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:9AA18256-583C-4CDE-9ACA-2609F27885FD@xxxxxx

i am having this same problem and one thing i have to ask do all of your
copies of windows have media center because i think that media center loads
elements of media player to do its bidding i use media center non stop but
this problem happens on start up or after using media center and then try and
play a video file in media player, so media center may be the culprit, if
your not using media center see if there is a way to make it not load at
start up and try that solution.

I believe Media Center is integrated inside of Vista somehow. However,
in my opinion, this is a 100% bug with Vista. And, there is absolutely
no reason for Windows to not allow us to uninstall media center. I'm
back to XP again and life is good again.


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So you currently cannot run the player? Had you uninstalled Norton Internet
Security 2007 from this machine at some point?

--
Speaking for myself only.
See http://zachd.com/pss/pss.html for some helpful WMP info.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
--
"jopiv" <jopiv@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:2579D811-11A6-4E57-9EDF-DEAF013ABA19@xxxxxx

Hi Zach,

I have been scouring the net looking for an answer to this problem for the last couple of months on and off and I see your responses everywhere. I have been to your website and I have tried many of the items there.

I upgraded from XP to Vista Ultimate x86 in March of 2006. WMP ran well up until the beginning of this year (Jan 2007) when all of a sudden I have the same problem as everyone else here. I must close WMP in the task manager to run media content on my computer or on the net. Something else that others haven’t mentioned is that my PDA won’t sync unless I stop WMP in the task manager first, once I do everything works fine.

I did run your registry.exe file from your website and I have run regsvr32 jscript.dll like Paolo. Both ran successfully without changing anything as far as I can tell. I notice you asked if Norton Internet Security 2007 was removed recently and coincidentally I did “upgrade” to Norton 360 around that timeframe. For some reason my system restore points from around this timeframe and before are missing too. This also happened around the same timeframe so I wonder what event took place to change all these things.

WMP works fine as does syncing if I end the WMP process in the task manager first but I would like to fix this small problem if there is a fix.

Thanks,
Scott