Windows Media Player: WMP mini FAQ for Vista issues

There is a specific focus herein on Windows Media Player 11 for Windows Vista. If you want the older "all versions" FAQ, go here.

Windows Media Player 11 Questions

Windows Media Player 11 (build 11.0.5721.5145 for Windows XP SP2, 11.0.6000.6324 for Vista) is available now. A handful of fixes for it are available here, and a new plug-in for Firefox here. I highly recommend Vista users get the cumulative WMP update.

My notes so far:
* Best Tip: If you have "mmswitch.ax" or "neroburnplugin.dll" on your system, you should remove those - those don't work with WMP. If you have "ffdshow.ax", "mpegsplitter.ax", "divxdec.ax", "xvidcore.dll", "igdumd32.dll", "sockspy.dll" (BitDefender Anti-Virus) on your system, you should make sure you have the latest versions of those, as earlier versions may causes crashes. These files alone account for almost half the problems encountered with WMP-Vista. Avoid codec packs. These install old versions of these files and cause your machine to crash. Not good. If you have "mmswitch.ax", remove or delete it, it's just bad.
* SatelliteTVforPC 2006 randomly installs their own version of wmp.dll. This will cause you to crash - or WMP simply won't start at all. Since they've corrupted WMP, uninstalling them won't even fix it.
To fix this for Windows Vista: Use this to fix your system up - ONLY RUN THIS ON VISTA 32BIT SYSTEMS.
To fix this for Windows XP: reinstall the player.
SatelliteTVforPC 2007 does not do this anymore, but that doesn't really help you if you had installed SatelliteTVforPC 2006, sorry. =\
* Vista-only: If you have an Intel 945/946/965 express chipset, get their updated drivers - that should fix up some potential crashes and video glitchings. If you have igdumd32.dll on your system, please look for those drivers, which came out April 2007.
* Vista-only: If your sound card is crackling or having audio glitching (especially towards the end of tracks!), right-click on the Speaker icon in the system tray, select Playback Devices, right-click Speakers in that new dialog, go to Properties, then go to Enhancements - choose "Disable All Enhancements" and you should be fixed up. If this does fix you up, check with your sound card vendor - they should not be having this problem. I believe Dell/Sigmatel do have a driver update here that should fix you up. If you're using an X-Fi and this is happening, disable "Sound Blaster Enhancements" under Control Panel and Properties for the X-Fi.
* Vista-only: Some systems have "DisableProtectedAudioDG" set to 0x1 under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Audio , which will break some audio playback. Reset that to 0x0 and Urge files should work again. (This can lead to error 0xc00d11b1 if set wrong.)
* Vista-only: You may not be able to install Urge onto some Sony Vista machines. These machines had broken junction points. You can either reinstall Vista to fix this or you can use the junction tool as detailed here.
* If you're using a non-US locale format for your Date, the Recently Added feature won't work right (it likely won't show any content). Either go to the Regional and Language Options control panel, click Customize, click Date and use a MM/DD/YYYY form OR make your own "Recently Added" playlist.
* If you are using WMP11 on Media Center, you should install the October Rollup (KB925766) here.
* To get a tally of the number of songs and their time from within the library, select them. That tally will show up in the chrome briefly. Or hover the mouse over the "Now Doing" region, which is the region above the playlist. If you're building a playlist in the rightmost library pane, you may need to push Stop in order to get the time to show up.
* To start the player in Now Playing, update your WMP shortcut to be "wmplayer.exe /Task:NowPlaying"
* The white corner dots that can appear aren't removable - either switch to Classic Menus or resize the player (which only fixes it until player restart).
* v11 setup issues are covered here.
* There likely will not be a Windows Media Player 11 Enterprise Deployment Pack. Simply take the version 10 EDP, rename the WMP11 installer to "mpsetup.exe" and you should be set.
* You can uninstall the WMP11 through the Add/Remove Programs control panel. If you have run old versions of CCleaner (they have fixed this in current builds), those will destroy WMP's ability to uninstall. If you have run CCleaner or otherwise find that uninstall fails, you should still be able to use the System Restore point that WMP created in order to roll back to your previous player version. If you have run CCleaner and System Restore does not work, contact Product Support - steps to do so are available under WMP's Help menu.
* The MMS protocol was deprecated many years ago (v9), and with WMP11 MMS URLs will only work if the server has MMS over HTTP support turned on (preferably for both "Enable HTTP distribution for Windows Media Station service" and "Enable HTTP streaming for Windows Media Unicast service". (KB article.) MMS is only used as a rollover protocol in WMP11.
* Roxio Drag to Disc and Sonic DLA lock the optical drives to appear as hard drives. This blocks WMP from burning to disc. Turn them off if you want to burn with WMP.
* Archaic MS visualizations are not supported.
* If your remote content viewer doesn't see WMP's shared library, remove and readd the sync relationship.
* The Network Sharing Service needs the Universal Plug and Play Device Host, HTTP SSL, and SSDP Discovery services to be functional/running in order to work.
* If you have an iPod and want to use it with WMP, stuff like XPlay and MusicBridge is your friend.
* Vista-only: If you want to use the 64bit version of WMP as the default player on Vista 64-bit, run "unregmp2.exe /SwapTo:64" from an ELEVATED (admin) cmd.exe prompt and then set registry value HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\wmplayer.exe, "Path" to be "%Programfiles%\Windows Media Player". To undo that, reset the "Path" value and then run "unregmp2.exe /SwapTo:32" from an elevated cmd.exe prompt.
* If you're using a super-minimum XPe image, it's not going to work with WMP since WMP requires the crypto service. You would need to rebuild your target image to include the crypto service/infrastructure.
* If you're using a Linksys BEFSR41 router, you'll need to enable Multicast in the router's security setttings. Otherwise that will block the Windows Media Connect / Network Sharing Service from working.
* If you want v11 to queue on double-clicks in the library, set HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\Preferences, value name "LibraryDoubleClickQueueV11" to the REG_DWORD value 0x1.

Windows Media Player 10 Questions

A surprisingly great list of the further updates available to WMP10 is available here.

A feature you probably didn't notice: click on the time display in the player - you can now have the player show Current Time:Total Time, as was requested (since normally it just shows Current Time). =)

You must have a music service available in order to use the Info Center feature.

The Nero Fast CD Burning Plug-in does not work in WMP10 at this time. You would likely want to remove that.

The old Radio Tuner is under WMP10's Guide button, then click Radio on that page, then Radio Tuner.

Lyrics can be viewed in WMP10 using View:Captions. You may need to enable Captions using WMP's Tools:Options:Security's "Show local captions when present".

The WMP10 Energy Bliss visualization shows Album Art only if the art is in a separate file and only if it is assigned the name "Folder.jpg" or "AlbumArtSmall.jpg". It will also display album art assigned filename "AlbumArt_WMID_Large.jpg" or "AlbumArt_WMID_Small.jpg", but since the average user doesn't understand how to get the WMID, we'll ignore that. You'll get WMID Album Art for the file if you use "Find Album Info" on the track within the library.

Windows Media Player 9 Series Player Questions

If you are having audio distortion during the playback of MP3 files, rename the file "ctmp3.acm" on your system (to "ctmp3.bak" or something like that). This is a Creative PlayCenter MP3 decoder that the Player isn't fully compatible with.

If crossfading (a Windows XP feature) does not work for MP3 files, you likely have a pirated MP3 encoder installed to your system. This codec will NOT crossfade. If you're using WMP9, you can rename the file "l3codeca.acm" (and/or l3codecp.acm) on your system (to "l3codeca.bak" or such) and then reinstall the player and things should work fine at that point. If you're using WMP10, you would need to run "regsvr32.exe l3codeca.acm". However, that won't work if you've pirated the FhG codec: doing so will pretty much leave you broken and out of luck. Don't pirate software.

Internet Connectivity Questions

Q: WMP thinks I'm always offline (or returns error 0xc00d1126 or 0xC00D11B3).

A: First, run the Internet Connection Wizard (Start:Run "icwconn1.exe") - especially if you have a cable or DSL connection.

If and only if none of these options work for you, there is a final option: go to the WMP's Tools:Options menu dialog and click "Connect to the Internet". This option, present in v9 or newer, should work in every case where there actually is a working non-blocked connection to the Internet.
If you are using an older player, as a final option run this reg file to set your WMP to always think it is online. If you want to get rid of this Force Online setting, run this reg file to remove that setting. Note that this will only force WMP into thinking that you're online - it won't actually fix any connectivity or proxy issues you may be having. If ForceOnline doesn't work, then the question is why your specified/detected connectivity settings aren't work.

If you're having further issues, it is time for you to contact Product Support so that they can figure out a real and better solution for you. Note that networking continues to improve with each version of Windows and each version of Windows Media Player. Ideally you would want to run Windows XP and the Windows Media Player for Windows XP. WM Player 9 Series also has improved networking logic, but Windows 9x still has a relatively flakey networking layer.

Q: Why can I not access the "Network" tab in the player's Tools:Options menu? Or: Why is the list of protocols blank in the player's Network tab?

A: The Microsoft KB article on fixing this sort of corruption is here.
You should be able to simply rename the "Windows Media" folder under the hidden directory "%appdata%\local\microsoft\windows media" on Vista). (It appears the bad file may be WMSDKNS.dtd under the "Windows Media" folder in that directory.) In some cases, running "regsvr32 c:\windows\system32\wmnetmgr.dll" from an elevated cmd.exe prompt may fix this up.

Q: What port should be open on my intranet to allow users to connect to Windows Media content?

A: Port 1087. See the article about WM networking and firewalls here.

---

WMP Installation Questions

Q: How do I reinstall WMP on Vista?

A: Sorry, there's no way to reinstall an OS subcomponent in Vista. Your only options are to do a System Restore or to reinstall Vista. If you manually attempt to re-register WMP, you will at the least break progressive download and will probably break the taskbar player too. Sorry.

Q: I get the message "wmp.dll version xx.x.x.xxxx expected, but version yy.y.y.yyyy is present" (or this same basic message occurs for wmploc.dll or wmplayer.exe)

A: On Windows Vista: Reboot your system. Then open cmd.exe as an administrator and then run "c:\windows\system32\unregmp2.exe /UpdateWMP" to fix this.

On all other Windows systems: Reboot your system and then run "c:\windows\inf\unregmp2.exe /UpdateWMP" to fix this.

Q: Why do I get the error message "This version of Windows Media Technologies is incompatible with this version of Windows" when I try to install Media Player?

A: If you still have the Windows Media Format 11 runtime listed in the system's Add/Remove Programs control panel, this behavior is by design. You must first uninstall the Windows Media Format 11 runtime before you can install Windows Media Player 10. <[? If you do not have the Windows Media Format 11 runtime present on your system, this article covers how to fix this. You can't get this message without system files being deleted or corrupted, so something is wrong with your system. Most likely wmploc.dll was deleted from %windir%\system32 . The installer will not continue if this file is not present.

You can fix this in the following fashions:
* Either a system restore back before the files were deleted OR a reversion of a previous system restore that caused this problem.
* An OS reinstall/repair using Repair mode (which I believe would require an SP2 disk?)
* Reversion back to SP1, reinstallation of WMP, upgrade back to SP2. Or reverting to SP1 and simply reinstalling SP2 should work too.

Q: How do I solve the error "Windows Media Player is not installed properly and must be reinstalled. Do you want to install the Player from the Microsoft Web site?"

A: This is an indication of system file corruption. You would want to run "sfc /scannow" from an elevated cmd.exe prompt so that the system can repair itself.
The text of that message is in error: you could not fix this by going to the Microsoft web site.

Q: How do I reinstall Windows Media Player on Vista?

A: Reinstall is not possible without reinstalling the OS. Generally Vista should prevent anything bad from happening to WMP's core. Anything happening should not require a reinstall of WMP to fix, and in fact the reinstall would likely have little to no effect.

Q: How do I uninstall the player? I need to fix it!

A: I'm not sure where the Myth of Uninstall was created. By the "Myth of Uninstall", I mean the notion that uninstalling something is the way to fix it. But it's fairly incorrect, so...:

Q: I wish to deploy the Windows Media Player in an intranet and block XXX feature (radio, Media Guide, etc). How do I do so?

A: The easiest thing to do is to use the Group Policy editor (gpedit.msc) to lock the user into a skin of your choice using the "Set and lock skin" policy. This eliminates access to the Media Guide and Radio Tuner from within the player.

If you're a user locked into skin mode - a tweaking program called "Fresh UI" can lock you into skin mode using the Policy setting sometimes, so be aware of that.

Q: How do I make Windows Media Player my default player for a file type?

A: On Vista: Go to the Start Menu and use the Default Programs control panel.

Q: How do I make Windows Media Player not be my default player for a file type?

A: On Vista: Use the Start Menu's Default Programs dialog to associate to your new chosen player.
On either Vista or XP, you can also the Set Programs and Defalts control panel, although that can be overkill.

Q: Why does some other player always play back the files I want to play back with WMP or some other player?

A: That usually means that the other application is taking back over the association. If giving the association to WMP doesn't work, you would either need to turn off some setting in the other application's Options menu or uninstall that other application.

Q: Where can I find mplayer2.exe / WMP6.4?

A: This legacy functionality is not present in Windows Vista.

Q: Why am I getting the Media Guide in a foreign language? How do I change the default language?

A: (thanks to John Cupak) The Media Guide uses IE's default language initially, and then sets a cookie indicating your language preference. Delete that cookie and the language will reset.

Q: Can I open multiple instances of WMP?

A: You can actually run the Zune Media Player at the same time, which is about the same thing as two instances of WMP.
But for WMP itself, no. You can embed multiple instances of WMP in a web page (I've supplied a page you can do this with here). Or you can use something like Morisoft's AV Mix Master, which opens multiple instances of WMP within one interface.

(For the curious: multiple stand-alone players were turned off in WMP7+ due to library and device contention. Don't ask me, that's just the Rationale.)

Q: How do I determine what version of WMP I have?

A: See this article.

Q: How do I disable Auto-Update (aka AutoUpgrade)?

A: See the KB article here. Or disable Windows Update, as the player in Vista uses the standard Windows Update system.

Q: How do I get rid of the "Play as Playlist", "Add to Playlist" and "Enqueue"/"Add to Now Playing List" options WMP likes to use in the shell?

A: Rename or delete the registry keys "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{F1B9284F-E9DC-4e68-9D7E-42362A59F0FD" ("Add to Playlist", "Add to Burn List", "Add to Sync List", and "Enqueue") and "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{8DD448E6-C188-4aed-AF92-44956194EB1F}" ("Copy to Audio CD") and "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{CE3FB1D1-02AE-4a5f-A6E9-D9F1B4073E6C}" ("Play as Playlist"). It is not recommended that you do this. You will need to restore these keys yourself - or reinstall Vista! - if you want this functionality back later.

---

CD Playback Questions

Q: The audio crackles and pops or 'skips' during CD playback.

A: Turn on Error Correction in WMP's Tools:Options:Devices menu for that specific drive. If that doesn't help, switch to using Analog playback using WMP's Tools:Options:Devices menu . If subsequently you don't hear audio, look here. Additionally, if your drive is really not happy, turning on error correction with digital playback will actually cause skipping.
You may simply have a bad drive.

Q: Why does WMP's CD audio or audio sound so bad/goofy/staticy?.

A: Turn off SRS WowSound and/or the EQ (most likely culprit) from within the Now Playing pane. On most people's computers it hopefully makes the sound sound Better, but on some... it doesn't.

Q: WMP is showing the wrong content information about my CD. How do I fix this?

A: WMP recognizes tracks via a unique ID on the compact disc associated to metadata that AMG (All Music Guide) maintains. When you update this information via the "Get Names"/"Find Album Info" option in the Rip pane, that information will be used to correct the database in the future. AMG says here that it takes about six weeks or so for information to be added. If you are an artist or producer, they take direct submissions via an e-mail address on that page, so go send them mail. :)
(And yes, this stuff does get used - I've verified the addition to the database of about ~200 CDs I put metadata in for.)

Q: Why won't WMP update the Album Info?

A: If WMP won't update the album info, the possible fixes are:
* If the Media Guide shows up in WMP, then that's good. If not, WMP can't connect to the metadata servers and you need to fix WMP's connection settings.
* If clearing IE's Temporary Files cache using IE's settings menu helps restore this, your IE cache was corrupt.
* If player library corruption is blocking this, then resetting your library will fix you up.
* If it's an user profile corruption, then a second/new user account on the system should be able to retrieve metadata. You can then copy that new user's library on top of your library and you should be good to go.

Q: Why is there gap between tracks when playing back my seamless DJ mix (or classical) CD?

A: WMP uses digital playback, which introduces this. Turn on the Cross-fading enhancement (which is on by default) and set it to 0 to eliminate this gap.
Note that this addresses playback, and not burning CDs.
If you want gapless CDs, that requires Disc-At-Once (DAO) or such, which WMP doesn't natively support but other software does. If that doesn't meet your needs, use the stand-alone Nero or Roxio CD burning software, both of which support WMA and DAO.

As regards CDText: WMP can not read CDText nor can it burn CDText. Or you can install this CDText plug-in if you want WMP to be able to generally read CDText.

Q: Why doesn't my CD headphone jack let me hear audio when I use WMP to play a CD?

A: The headphone jack is only live during analog playback. In order to make this work, you'd need to switch WMP to use Analog Playback instead of digital playback: you can change this in WMP's Tools:Options:Devices settings for that drive . Or plug your headphones into the soundcard's output plug.

Q: Why won't WMP support digital playback on my CD-ROM drive?

A: First, you'd need DMA/digital audio extraction turned on. Second, WMP tests the quality of the digital read. If the CD-ROM is giving a dirty read - spewing too many errors into the data feed - WMP will reject digital playback on that drive. Some players are more accepting of bad reads, but continuing to read digitally from a dirty source can result in very nasty errors, and as such WMP plays it safe and disallows digital reads from dirty source CD-ROM drives.

Q: How do I make CDs AutoPlay / not AutoPlay (aka AutoStart)?

A: See this web page for details on how to do this for every OS but Windows 2000.
To >disable auto-play of CD's in Windows 2000, do the following:
1. Go to the start menu
2. Open a new Microsoft Management Console by running "mmc" (without the quotation marks) at a command line.
3. On the Console menu, click Add/Remove Snap-in.
4. Click Add to display the installed snap-ins.
5. After pressing "add" look for the Group Policy snap-in and click ADD
6. Click Finish
7. Click Close
8. Click OK
9. Expand the Local Computer Policy to the following: "\Computer Configuration\Administrative templates\System"
10. Double-click on Disable Autoplay
11. Choose Enabled
12. Apply the change
13. Press OK

Note: If you just want to change to a different player for AutoPlay, either go to WMP's Tools:Options:Formats/File Types menu and unselect AudioCD, or go to My Computer:Tools:Folder Options:File Types, and change Audio CD to open with your favorite CD Player.

In Windows XP, you can update the AutoPlay tasks by:
1. Open My Computer
2. Right-click on the drive in question and select "Properties"
3. Go to the "AutoPlay" tab and select what AutoPlay action you would like

Stephen points out that on Windows XP, you can also turn AutoInsert Notification on or off. AutoInsert Notification is what tells software that there is a new CD in the drive (vs AutoPlay, which is What Do We Do With It). To change the AutoInsert Notification (which I recommend you always leave ON)-
===
1. Click Start, click Run, type "regedit" (without the quotation marks) in the Open box, and then press ENTER.
2. Locate and click the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\CDRom
3. To enable automatically running CD-ROMs, change the Autorun value to 1. To disable automatically running CD-ROMs, change the Autorun value to 0 (zero).
4. Restart your computer.
===
If AutoPlay options are not visible on Windows XP, per Doug Knox-

Go to Start, Run and enter SERVICES.MSC
Scroll down to Shell Hardware Detection. Ensure that this service is Started and set to Automatic.

If that's set, check the Group Policy Editor - run "gpedit.msc", go to Local Computer Policy:Computer Configuration:Administrative Templates:System and make sure the "Turn off Autoplay" policy is set to "Not Configured".

If you're still having problems, find the TweakUI power toy and use that - that has some extra little AutoPlay options.
Vance points out that you can simply hold down the left shift key for 5-10 seconds after you insert the CD to disable AutoPlay temporarily.

Q: Why is the CD Audio playlist not refreshing when I insert a new CD? It only refreshes when I restart WMP...

Q: Why does the player not recognize a new CD when I put it in? It only refreshes when I restart WMP.

A: You've turned off AutoInsert Notification, which WMP uses to detect the newly inserted disc. Turning AutoPlay back on should fix this.

---

CD Ripping (recording from) Questions

Q: How do I stop WMP from automatically ripping my audio CDs?

A: If you have already unchecked "Rip CD when inserted" on WMP's Tools:Options:Rip Music and it's still ripping, then go to Windows Explorer. Right-click on the CD/DVD drive in question. Select Properties. Select the AutoPlay tab. On that tab, pick the Music CD dropdown item, and change the "Action to Perform" to anything other than "Rip CD". (Thanks to Neil for this.)

Q: I want to rip at a WMA bitrate higher than 192kbps. How do I do this?

A: Set WMARecordRate under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\Preferences to whatever value you want. The UI won't show you that you're using that in the Rip tab, but it'll be at that value.

Q: I am using WMP and cannot encode to MP3 (specifically MP3 at 128kbps). Why do I get error 0xc00d0faa ("Windows Media Player cannot copy the file...")?

A: The work-around is to go to WMP's Tools:Options:Rip Music menu and select anything other than 128kbps in the drop-down.
The fix is to delete the registry value "LowrateSample" under the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\Settings\Mp3Encoding . If that value does not exist, then you'll want to make that the "PreferredCodecPath" at that location is pointing to "l3codecp.acm". If both of those check out, then you'll want to switch to a different bitrate. If the value of "PreferredCodecPath" is "l3codeca.acm", that is WRONG. It should never be that ever. l3codecp.acm is the correct setting for WMP.

Q: How do I get WMP to rip at 96kbps MP3?

A: Set one of the "Rate" values at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, Software\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\Settings\MP3Encoding to 96k.

Q: What's the benefit of CD Digital Recording?

A: WMP can do this faster than real-time and you don't pick up any noise from other audio sources on your sound mixer.

Q: Why isn't there any audio in the tracks I ripped from my CDs using analog ripping? I don't like silent files...

A: Either you have DMA *on* in Device Manager or your CD (or DVD) drive's analog audio cable is not connected. [On WinNT (2000/XP), this is set under Device Manager:IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers:Primary IDE Channel:Advanced Settings.] Within WMP, the "Analog" (vs. Digital) setting is in WMP's Tools:Options:Devices menu option, in the Properties for the CD device in question.

If you're getting background noise, mute the Line In and Microphone input in your system's volume settings.

If none of this helps - your best option is to try a different CD-ROM drive.

---

DRM (Digital Rights Management) Questions

Q: I get the message "Windows Media Player cannot play the protected file because a security upgrade is required. Do you want to download the security upgrade?", but nothing happens.

A: If you are using WMP11, you should be able to view your "Indiv Version" under WMP's Help:About:Technical Support Information menu dialog. This should be 2.8.0.1 or later. If it is not, you can run (exactly, case-sensitive):
On Vista:     %SystemRoot%\system32\unregmp2.exe /PerformIndiv
from the Start menu's "Run" prompt. Then start WMP and try the content again.

If that still does not work (or you are using an earlier version of WMP), your DRM cache is likely corrupted. You can possibly fix this via resetting your DRM store (step one is probably not relevant to you). This will lose any established licenses, though, which you would then need to reacquire from your license/content provider. You would then need to attempt to Individualize again, either through the web page or unregmp2.

Because this is destructive, if you cannot Individualize (the problem here), you are far better off contacting actual support.

Q: Why can I only play files I rip back on the computer I ripped them to, and not on another computer on the network (for example)?

A: This limitation is because of the DRM applied to the file, which licensed the file solely for your usage on that computer. To turn DRM off for all content you create in the future, go to WMP7's Tools:Options:CD Audio and uncheck "Enable Personal Rights Management" (this is under Tools:Options:Copy Music, "Protect Content" under newer versions of WMP), which will result in DRM-free content for all content ripped from that point forward.

Generally, I'd simply recommend turning DRM off - going to WMP's Tools:Options:Copy Music and unchecking "Protect Music" - and then rerecording the CDs in question with DRM turned off. After all, even if you recovered the files, they'd *still* be DRMd, and there seems to be no reason for that.

Q: I can no longer access my DRM'd (protected) content...

A: If you backed up your licenses, restore your licenses. If not - or if your license store is corrupt - then you'll want/need to reencode the content. Regardless, I'd recommend reencoding the files with DRM turned *off* - see above for how to turn it off.

Q: I'm getting error 0xc00d11d6, 0xc00d2751 or 0xc00d2754 trying to play back my DRM'd content.

A: Look here for 0xc00d2751 or here for 0xc00d2754.

Q: Why isn't my content transcoded when I transfer it to my portable device?

A: The file you are trying to copy to your portable device may be protected. A protected file is a digital media file that is secured with a license to prevent illegal distribution.

When transferring to a portable device, the Player cannot convert protected content to other encoding formats (for example, from WMA to MP3) or to other bit rates (for example, from 128 kilobits per second (Kbps) to 64 Kbps). When transferring to a portable device, the Player can only convert unprotected content to other formats and bit rates.

---

CD Burning (recording to) Questions

Q: I want to record an audio CD using the WMAs I created.

A: This should be pretty easy: go to the Player's Burn pane and add your tracks to your burn list, then click Start Burn.
You will not be able to use audio plug-ins to affect how a CD is burned, meaning that you can not use the crossfading plug-in to burn a crossfaded CD. The CD will be normalized/leveled by default (if the files contain normalization/leveling information), but you can turn that off via TweakMP.

Per Kathy: If you're having problems with this and have up-to-date firmware for your burner (check your CD burner vendor's web site for that), . This is the actual Error Code Number to Error Description mapping table, which is also referenced with a little more data here - but note that MSDN's reference does not have the error code number.

Make sure you check out the actual Microsoft article on CD creation problems.

Finally, Kathy's Steps Towards Happy Burning are (that helps fix stuff like 0x8004020E (invalid alignment), 0x80040227 (filter in wrong state) and whatnot):

1. Roxio's Drag to Disk or Sonic's "DLA" will interfere with burning - you may need to turn that off if you're using it - right-click on the drive and choose "Disable drag to disk for this drive"
2. Check for your drive on http://www.microsoft.com/hcl. If it's not listed as a compatible burner for Windows XP, it may not work correctly. You may want to make sure (if this is Windows XP) that the drive is enabled for burning. Per the Windows XP Release Notes: "To verify that your CD recorder drive is recognized, open My Computer, and in the Devices with Removable Storage area, right-click the drive, and then click Properties. If your CD recorder is recognized, you will see a Recording tab. If you are having problems copying to CDs and your CD recorder is recognized in My Computer, verify that the Enable CD recording on this drive check box is selected in the Properties dialog box for that drive." If there is no Recording tab, it's possible that the drive is not recognized by XP as a burner.
3. Make sure you have all burner-related updates from Windows Update. There's another burning update here - I'm not sure if that's on Windows Update.
4. Set your burn speed lower on your drive. You can do this by right-clicking on the drive in Explorer, clicking Properties and lowering the speed on the Recording tab.
5. Try different media. Sometimes, the quality of media is just not good.
6. Try to burn some different songs - sometimes data gets corrupted.
7. The "IMAPI burn service" must be enabled [Under the system's Administrative Tools:Computer Management:Services and Applications:Services].
8. Try uninstalling and reinstalling the driver for the CD burner.
9. Make sure you're using CD-Rs, not CD-RWs (CD-RWs don't work on most consumer players).

Also, you'll note that for all folders set as folder type "Music" (via folder Properties on the Customize tab) that have actual music in them (WMA/MP3/WAV) will have a "Burn Audio CD" folder task available.

Sometimes, while burning data CDs within Windows Explorer will work, burning Audio CDs in Windows Media Player will fail. Only one track may be burned before it stops and Windows Media Player says “will not fit” on the remaining tracks. Windows Media Player is simply reporting that the rest of the tracks will not fit on the completed CD because it has already been closed after burning one track. Because audio CDs need to be compatible with a wide range of consumer CD players, there is a greater likelihood that audio burns will fail due to buffer underruns. Closing some running programs and lowering drive speed may help. More about buffer under runs and what to do about them can be read here: http://www.cdrfaq.org/faq04.html#S4-1.

In some cases, WMP may be stuck "inspecting" when you're trying to burn a CD. This either indicate that a file in the burn list can't be found (the location can't be resolved) OR that WMP is busy trying to provide Volume Leveling information. In the first case, you should attempt to verify that the files in the burn list exist by playing them. In the second case, you can either wait or uncheck "Apply volume leveling" under WMP's Tools:Options:Burn menu.

Finally- there's an article on how to burn CDs on Windows XP here and another one here ("Windows XP CD Burning Secrets").

If none of that works and you really really want to burn CDs from within WMP instead of using a different application, you may want to try the Nero Fast CD-Burning Plug-in for Windows Media Player 9 Series instead.

If that STILL doesn't work, you would have to use 3rd party burning software such as Nero or Roxio in order to burn your CDs.

Q: What if I want to burn a data CD?

A: Using the player, go to the Burn menu tab. With your blank CD-RW in the burning driver, select "Data CD" from the drop-down tab on the right.

Or you can use the Windows shell interface for to burn a data CD.

One thing to note is that the Windows shell doesn't Finalize burned data CDs until the disc is absolutely full, so if your data CD player doesn't accept non-finalized CDs (as my Pioneer DEH-P940MP car CD player won't [and reportedly the Blaupunkt deck won't either]), you will most likely really want to use a 3rd party CD burning applications to burn the CD, and make sure you finalize the CD if your player won't accept it otherwise. Note that data CD players that don't accept non-finalized CDs are on their way out, so newer / more advanced players should accept non-finalized CDs just fine (as the Aiwa deck does). Some CD playback devices will also not accept CD-RWs, so you may need to burn with CD-Rs instead. And some REALLLLY old CD players simply won't accept anything other than commercially pressed CDs. :\

Q: How can I print playlists, CD labels, or the contents of my Media Library?

A: Ries wrote a Media Library Exporter and Importer that imports the Media Library into Access *and back*. :) Also, his Playlist Copier lets you copy the playlist to the clipboard, which is mighty useful for printing playlists. :)

If on the other hand you want a more full-fledged ability to print out the files you have on your system, Galley recommends Media Jukebox.
Gary recommends eMusic Tag Editor.
Shurosoft's SongWriter plug-in lets you update your web site with your current music selection. :)

---

MPEG/DVD playback Questions

Q: Why does WMP crash/hang playing MPEG files on my box?

A: You're likely having video card driver problems. Turn down the video hardware acceleration (in WMP's View:Options:Performance menu dialog).

Q: Why can't I get video, seek in MPEGs or other MPEG related playback problems?

Q: Why am I getting ERROR_INVALID_FUNCTION - 0x80070001 trying to play back MPEG files?

A: WMP uses DirectShow for MPEG playback, and a number of third party applications install MPEG DirectShow filters that override the MPEG filter WMP normally uses. In particular, people sometimes seem to have conflicts with Intervideo WinDVD, Ligos, Micron WinDVD, System Shock (LGVid.ax is the key file here, TMK), and Creative Encore DVD. Uninstalling that software and potentially reinstalling WMP should fix the issue. There's an article about the problems with WinDVD here.

If you need to turn off a 3rd party MPEG codec and don't know how to uninstall it, the Radlight tool is what you need then. Or the DirectShow Filter Manager should work.

In some cases, the video card driver's video overlay may not be working properly follow the steps here to work around that driver bug.

Note that mcspmpeg.ax is a MainConcept MPEG file installed by a number of MPEG editing tools. It can cause crashing errors in playback. Most notably it's been known to make it so that you can't click on an Internet link to an MPEG and have it work right. Either renaming the files mcspmpeg.ax AND mcdsmpeg.ax on your system or running "regsvr32 /u %path%\mcdsmpeg.ax" and "regsvr32 /u %path%\mcspmpeg.ax" or contacting MainConcept should help fix this up. Note that these two files may be installed in multiple places all over your system, so you'd need to make sure you search for them if you're having problems with them.

I also found that the XingMPEG Player overrode a number of registry settings that WMP set, so once you install the XingMPEG Player, ASF won't embed properly in PowerPoint any more, for example.

Also, if you get a crash in "encwdm.ax" when using WMP, run

regsvr32 /u encwdm.ax

which will break the Creative Encore DVD player but will stop crashing WMP. Run:

regsvr32 encwdm.ax

to reverse this status.

If you get a crash in "mplapx.dll" (or "cpuinf32.dll") (Ligos MPEG decoder files), this is an either an issue with ULead or DVDIt. [1/3/02 Update: Sabine points out that ULead's Tech Support pages are broken right now - this may be another way to find the update, but ... you should probably contact ULead.] I've heard multiple reports now that the Ligos software as used by some video editing and other software is really really bad for WMP and nearly impossible to remove, so either stay the heck away from it or contact the Ligos company directly so that they can get this fixed up. :\

Finally, if you really are still baffled and want to figure out which MPEG decoder is being loaded, you'd need to install the (huge) DirectX SDK and use GraphEdt.exe. Build a graph based upon the file in question - that should show you which filter is being loaded, and which you would likely want to remove.

Q: Why doesn't my MPEG file play in full? At a certain point in the file, video playback (or playback entirely) stops.

A: There's been an upsurge of crappy quality files on the Internet in the past years. Your MPEG is joined together poorly. You will need to run it through an MPEG editor to get it working correctly. Or you can use something like TMPGEnc Tools and try to simply reconstruct the file header, which may fix this up.

Q: I'm trying to play back MPEG2 or Video CD (VCD or SVCD) or DVD content on my box and it doesn't work.

A: Your box probably doesn't have an MPEG2 decoder. There's DVD Decoder packs available currently for use with Windows Media Player on Windows XP.

If you have more than one MPEG2 decoder on the system, any arbitrary decoder may be being used for playback. To determine what DVD decoders are installed on your machine, run "dvdupgrd.exe /detect" (from the Windows Start:Run menu prompt) and that will list out the installed decoders. To set what decoder to use, get the Windows XP Video Decoder Checkup Utility (or the Vista Media Center Decoder utility.

Q: How do I access multiple MPEG audio channels in my karaoke (karoake) or "multiple language" Video CD?

A: You can set these options in Windows Media Player's Play:Audio and Language Tracks menu options. WMP7 and WMP8 simply play back Audio Channel One and will not allow you to switch which channel is used. You will need to use "mplayer2.exe" (WMP6 - this is already on your box) for now if you wish to use specific audio channels. While playing back the file within WMP6, go to the File:Properties menu option and from there you will be able to access the MPEG Audio decoder property page which will let you select which audio channel to use.

---

Codec Questions

Q: What codec do I need to play this file?

A: Open the file in WMP's Now Playing view. Once playback begins or partially fails, you will either get a pop-up error or the file will turn red in the Now Playing list. (If you don't get an error, right-click on the file in that Now Playing list and select Error Details.) On this error message, click Web Help. That information should tell you what codec you will need to obtain. Please note that the Microsoft codec list is more robust than any other source, so this is a really good starting point.

If that does NOT help, FIRST STEP: VideoInspector should help you determine what codec you need.
SECOND STEP: This is a good place to find codecs once you know what you need, such as if you know the fourCC. The official Microsoft site for this information is currently here. If what you're missing is a Microsoft system codec that you've accidentially uninstalled, this page may help.

Note that you are probably not the only one who's having trouble playing that piece of content: getting the content provider to either reencode with a more popular or non-pirated codec may save hundreds of other users the same pain you experienced. Or at least have the vendor link to the relevant codec...

Per MikeB: If you are getting gray screens (grey) instead of video for embedded playback using WMP6, while the content is playing right-click on the player, choose FILE: PROPERTIES and click the Advanced tab, double click on the "Windows Media Video Decoder" entry in the first box of the dialog, and make sure that the controls aren't all zeroed. [This is evidently caused by the pirated 'Nimo' codec pack.]

Finally, if none of that helps, make sure your connection bitrate is set, as if the connection bitrate is set or detected too low, the Windows Media Server communicating to you may 'thin' out the video so that the file can stream to you successfully given your detected connection bitrate.

Q: My content needs an MJPG (MJPEG) decoder. Where can I find one?

A: DirectX 8, DirectX 9, and Windows XP all include a MJPEG decoder.
If this doesn't work for you, there's also the PICVideo Motion JPEG codec. Other companies probably make 'em too.
The Canon digital cameras (and most other digital cameras) produce MJPEG AVIs, so if you are having problems playing the output files the camera produces, installing DirectX 8 or 9 should fix the issue.

Q: My AVI files uses the Indeo codec...

A: Reencode the content. Intel sold Indeo to Ligos, who to my knowledge stopped development on it and started charging for it. Old broken versions are what's out there, so it's going to be a bad experience to keep using this. Don't bother: get the content provider to reencode the content to a supported codec, thus solving the problem for everyone.

Q: What does it mean if I get the error - "The audio codec identified by the format tag 55 is required to play this file."?

A: That means that your MP3 decoder has been broken by something that you've done to your system. The easiest way to fix this should be to find the file l3codeca.acm on your system, rename that file to l3codeca.bak, then go to WMP's Help:Check for Updates and run that so WMP can replace the l3codeca.acm MP3 decoder WMP uses.

Please note that the following list was the starting point - I've actually assembled the full list of all ~800 codecs out there that I've found, and that list will probably be published at Microsoft later this year (2006).

FormatTag	hex formattag	Audio Codec that supports it
49		GSM Audio
50		MSN Audio
66	0x42	G.723 (NetMeeting's version, I think)
69	0x45	G.726
85	0x55	MPEG Layer III (FhG)
98		Voxware MetaSound
105		Voxware MetaSound
112		Lernout and Hauspie (bad registration)
116	0x74	Voxware MetaVoice
117	0x75	Voxware MetaSound
273		G.723 (the Vivo version?)
304		ACELP Sipro
352		WMA Standard (v1)
353		WMA Standard (v2-v9)
354		WMA 9 Series Professional
355		WMA 9 Series Lossless
2000		AC3 (decoder here, I guess)
4356		Lernout and Hauspie (bad registration)
6172		Voxware MetaVoice

Note that I'm listing formattags here as integers, not hexadecimal. The player error messages may refer to them by hex values - 0x55 is 85 decimal. The Voxware ones are a mess - I may have them incorrect, since MetaSound, MetaVoice, and Siren all are a blur in my head right now.

Q: How do I get WMP6 and earlier to play back WMV and the other new ASF file types? (For example, on Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.)

A: The Codec download page is what you want. This is the codec redist for WMP (or offline computers or Intranets or CD-ROM distribution or etc.) updated with the new codecs ( WMV7, WMV8, WMV9, WMA8, WMA9 Standard ).
You will need to obtain a license if you want to redistribute this to others.

Q: What does it take for codec download to succeed?

A: Codec download requires:

• Internet Explorer 3.02 or later
• Internet access at time of content playback
• Medium Internet security settings
• the codec to be available on the server (non-Microsoft codecs are not available on the server)
• AngelPotion or other badly broken codecs not to be installed. AngelPotion will generally disable codec download. See the next ? for answers about badly broken codecs and how they affect codec download.

Additionally, on NT-based systems (Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows .Net, etc.), the user will need Admin privileges for most codec downloads.

Q: Why does WMP always try to download a codec when I play back a file?

A: If you're having this issue with MP3 files, it's likely that you have the FhG Professional codec, intentionally or otherwise. The FhG Professional codec does not support Windows Media Player's preroll attempt, and thus causes WMP to think it needs to download a codec. The fix for this would be to either rename "l3codeca.acm" or "l3codecp.acm" on your system (to something like "l3codeca.bak"). Then WMP might do one more codec download, but then it shouldn't happen again. Note that Windows Media Player 9 Series will not do a codec download for this case, but will instead break cross-fading and other benefits of how WMP uses pre-rolling.

If that's not the issue: Presumably a third party DirectShow filter has badly misregistered itself, claiming that it can support decompression of data that it in actuality can not. Generally if you can't isolate and remove whichever bad application did this, you'll need to destroy and rebuild your DirectShow filter database. This explains how to rebuild the DirectShow filter database. The DirectShow Filter Manager should also let you figure this out more easily....

Note that in many cases it will still be possible to play back the content after codec download regardless of codec download success, because at that point WMP will look again at available codecs that say they support the applicable file, but this time ignoring the misregistered filter that wasn't able to play the file. Sadly, there's no way to persist this "distrust" of that codec - you really need to figure out what the bad codec is and uninstall it. If you can identify which codec is misregistered on your system, let the vendor know so they can fix the issue. If you want to try to sort out what codec/filter is getting in the way (which can be tough), the best tool for this I'm currently aware of is the oddly named GSpot Codec Tool. In turn you can use the DxMan tool to get rid of those bad codecs/filters, or (as Jong points out) FilMerit, DSFMgr, or Radlight to adjust downward the merit for the bad filters. The last suggestion is only for expert users, though.

Q: I get a message saying that my security settings don't allow for the codec downloaded to be installed... how do I fix this?

A: Codec download requires IE 3.02 (or newer) to be on the box to have adequate cryptography in order to be able to trust downloaded packages. Then after this point it needs to check the IE security settings, which are under Internet Options:Security within IE. Specifically, you need to be able to download signed ActiveX controls for codec download to work. You can immediately increase security back up to the previous level after downloading the codec you need, BTW.

Q: Why doesn't codec download work for me?

A: Presumably the codec is not available on the codec server. The codec server is really solely designed to provide codecs for Windows Media files.

Q: How do I distribute the Windows Media codecs to the users on my intranet who do not have Internet access?

A: You'll want the Windows Media codec redistributable.

Q: I installed a codec pack and now I'm experiencing problems.

A: Codec packs are generally non-original works consisting of pirated software. As the packages are installing fairly random files to your system, you should not expect things to work properly if you install a "codec pack". You would need to contact the codec "vendor" in order to figure out what the hell they did to your system.

Installing random codecs is dangerous. It is extremely difficult in Windows to remove broken codecs, which means that you're better off simply not getting in trouble in the first place.

As of Jan 22 2008, the following codecs or codec packages are broken and will damage your system:

Morgan Multimedia Stream Switcher (aka MMSwitch) - will crash any program using DirectShow

Voxware MetaSound - will cause memory corruption on any application using sound

DivX 5.2 (the current version is 6.8, 5.2 has a bad bug and will crash)

3ivX - versions older than 5.0.1 have a known security hole

FLAC - versions older than 1.2.1 have known security vulnerabilities

MPC - 6.4.9.0 and earlier versions have known security vulnerabilities

FFDShow - still in beta, make sure you're using a mostly stable version such as 1.0.5.1659 or later

AngelPotion - generally the worst hack codec ever written, corrupts playback

AC3Filter - old versions break mono playback in the player, use 1.46 or later

MPEGSplitter.ax - buggy third party MPEG splitter - crashes on a divide by zero error

Ligos MPEG codecs (such as lmpgspl.ax) - should not be installed to Vista

old versions of Nero - old versions are often pirated in packs, often have issues

Indeo Audio Codec (iac25_32.ax) - crashes when queried about MPEG2 support, do not use on Vista, breaks DVDMaker

Ace Mega Codec Packs (installs MMSwitch, Voxware, DivX 5.2, old FFDShow, Indeo Audio Codec, and 3ivx)

AVI Codec pack (installs 3ivX)

BgPop Codec Pack (installs old broken InterVideo, Cyberlink, Ligos)

BoliGego Codec (2nd worst pack: installs AngelPotion, MMSwitch, and 3ivx)

Codec Pack All in 1 (installs MMSwitch)

Codec Pack de ELISOFT (installs old buggy FFDShow, old buggy AC3Filter, old buggy DivX, 3ivX, MMSwitch)

Defiler (uses an old buggy FFDShow version)

DelDecPack (uses an old buggy FFDShow version)

DivX Total Pack (installs MMSwitch)

DJBCP Codec Pack (install MMSwitch)

dTomoyo's Unified Codec Pack

Gordian Knot (installs MMSwitch)

K-Lite Codec Pack - anything older than 3.6.2 is Very Bad (such as installing Voxware, MMSwitch, Indeo, etc)

current K-Lite Mega Codec Pack (installs Indeo Audio Codec to Vista)

Matroska (uses an old buggy FFDShow version)

MUSK codec pack (installs MMSwitch and 3ivx)

Nimo Codec Pack (installs MMSwitch and 3ivx)

Nimo Codec Pack lite (installs MMSwitch)

RazorBB Codec Pack (installs Voxware, registers Indeo Audio on Vista)

Satsuki (uses an old buggy FFDSHow version)

SLD Codec Pack (installs MMSwitch and 3ivx)

The Codecs (installs MMSwitch)

The Codecs Lite (uses an old buggy FFDShow version)

Storm Codec Pack (installs Voxware and 3ivx)

Tsunami Codec Pack (worst pack: installs AngelPotion, MMSwitch, oldest FFDShow, old DivX, old AC3 filter, old Intervideo, old Cyberlink, and old Ligos)

Tzim's Codec Pack (uses an old buggy FFDShow version)

Windows Essential Codec Pack (installs 3ivx)

Also bear in mind that any content file requiring some random codec to be installed is going to necessitate every other user trying to play the file to install the above packages. As such, it may be more time effective to get the content vendor to reencode the file from the content source using more legitimate mainstream codecs that will not negatively impact users' systems.

No one should ever install Morgan Multimedia Stream Switcher ('mmswitch.ax'). No one should ever install Voxware MetaSound or MetaVoice. And don't ever install common / shared files to your own private path. It's dumb and that's called "DLLHell".
As of this writing (Dec 2007), many codec packs use private install pathing. This is just dumb. If a security update is released, there's no way to reliably get that or apply it. Installing the old version via any codec pack accidentally would then break you again. Codec packs are bad software put together by amateurs whose mistakes will damage your system's stability. We're all amateurs, but I'm extremely interested in keeping your system stable. Most codec pack vendors have shown little integrity or competence: it's a real challenge to keep up with exactly how they've decided to mess up your system today. "Codec packs" are the most pathetic bug-riddled software concept I have ever seen, bar none. This is disgusting software. No competent professional should ever be recommending one. No knowledgable amateur should ever be recommending one. Users suffer because they exist, and they affect the system at such an internal level that most users never really understand why they've started to see weird bad behavior.

I cannot overstate how incredibly incompetent codec packs are. These are the single worst thing that has ever happened to Windows multimedia ever. It was one thing for, say, Morgan Multimedia to write a bad crashing piece of software: it's entirely another for incompetent jerks to fob millions of copies of that off to user's systems where it then will proceed to randomly corrupt memory and crash.

The most popular question is then:

Q: Well How Should I Get Codecs?

A: Get the specific codecs you need as you need them (THIS IS THE BEST AND ONLY SMART CHOICE) thus ensuring you get the latest most stable most secure version of that codec.
If you're feeling daring, you can try to use a "good" codec pack such as CCCP or the Zero Codec Pack. See here for how to find out what codec you need. Note that I've seen CCCP do bad things now too, so I do not feel any codec pack is safe any longer. Making users your guinea pigs sucks no matter who is doing it.

Q: Every time I try to play my AVI file with WMP I get the message "Not enough storage is available to complete this operation."

A: The file you are trying to play is corrupt. You'll need to get a correctly encoded version of the file in order to play it. [Some players may be able to still play this file, but it is corrupt and you will have trouble with it in various applications - reencoding it now is the best option since now the source material is probably still around so you don't get locked out of it at some date in the future.]

Q: Audio doesn't work for some MSNBC files in Windows Media Player 7.

A: The Mac version of Terran Media Cleaner can insert the wrong bits/sample for ACELP audio content. It should be 0 bits/sample, but it is written to the file as 16 bits/sample. This is a content encoding problem that MSNBC and (I believe) Terran have been appraised of.

Q: I get a message saying "Cannot allocate memory because no size has been set" trying to play back a video file with WMP6.

A: Use WMP7 (or newer) to play this file. It's probably a high-bitrate file encoded by Media Cleaner 4. This encoding issue is fixed in Media Cleaner 5.

Q: Why do I get the message "The operation cannot be performed because the pins are not connected." when I try to play back a file with WMP?

A: See this information.

---

Audio Questions

Q: I'm getting error 0x80040256 trying to play back content...

Q: I'm having audio/video synch problems...

Q: I'm having sound problems (muffledness, echoes, errors, speed issues, etc).

A: Check for sound card driver updates, both from your vendor and from Windows Update (also make sure you have the latest DirectX there). You will also want to make sure that you have the correct speaker output selected under WMP's Tools:Options:Devices:Speakers. If that doesn't help, go to "Control Panel"-->"Multimedia"-->"Audio"-->"Advanced Properties" (this is the "Sound and Multimedia" control panel on Win2k) and turn down Hardware Acceleration. The Microsoft article on trouble-shooting audio can be found here.
If you're still having issues, you can switch to use WaveOut for audio rendering which may fix the issue for you (*Please note that you may need to reboot for this fix to take effect!*). If it doesn't, you must run this to switch back to using DirectSound.
Also, this and this page contains some good generic audio trouble-shooting info. [NOTE: In all cases, we're just working around bugs in your audio card driver. WMP uses a more advanced API than most other players use, which is why often WMP will be the only player to suffer from the sound card bugginess.] With WMP9 and newer, you may also need to be sure you have the right audio device selected under WMP's Tools:Options:Devices:Speakers menu dialog. This should be set up correctly by default, but in some rare cases your sound system may not work correctly unless you change this setting.

Note that if the problem is SOLELY isolated out to MP3 files - for example, the pitch shifts after the first couple seconds of MP3 playback - then you would need to rename the file "ctmp3.acm" on your system (to "ctmp3.bak" or something like that). This is a Creative PlayCenter MP3 decoder that the Player isn't fully compatible with. Renaming it allows WMP to use the FhG MP3 decoder that the player *is* compatible with.

If your sound just sounds overblown/overdriven, turn off WMP's EQ or lower the settings - the EQ does preamping too, which can mess with some sound cards.
If it sounds like it's a karaoke machine, then you may have a karaoke mode on the speakers that you might want to turn off.

Note also that Total Recorder installs a virtual sound card driver, which can cause problems as well. Switch back to your normal sound card driver and you should be okay again.

Q: Why do I only get two speaker sound out of my surround digital speakers?

A: Per Sumedh: Go into WMP's Tools:Options:Devices. Select speakers and click on Properties. *Uncheck* the checkbox that says "Use 24-bit audio for audio CDs". Click OK twice to get back to the player. Close and reopen the player.

Q: Why does my computer reboot during audio playback from the net (or stutter repeatedly during regular audio playback)?

A: Either you have a IRQ conflict (check Device Manager!) or your sound card's DirectSound support may be busted. If you don't have an IRQ conflict, go here for more help.

Q: Why does WMP's audio break up during playback when other apps are running, while other multimedia apps don't have this problem?

A: You need to bump WMP's thread priority up. There's an application that does this for other applications, but I don't recall what app this is right now.

Q: My audio gets distorted when I scroll or move the mouse or otherwise have lots of video movement onscreen. How do I fix this?

A: Your video processing is interfering. Right-click on the desktop, choose Properties. Click Settings. Click Advanced. Click Troubleshoot. Adjust the Hardware acceleration and you should be fine. Also, Stuart recommends unchecking "Use Smooth Scrolling" in Internet Explorer's Tools:Internet Options:Advanced menu options. Finally, George says that he fixed this by turning off "Show window contents while dragging".

Q: How do I make WMP louder?

A: WMP uses both the main volume control and the Wave volume control. WinAMP, for example, adjusts the Wave volume control and thus affects WMP. You would need to click on the speaker icon by the clock on the Start Bar (this area is called the system tray) and adjust the Wave volume control. Also affecting WMP's sound output will be WMP's "View:Now Playing Tools" menu's Graphic Equalizer (which can provide an additional boost by maxing the mixer lines), the "View:Now Playing Tools" menu's SRS WowSound, and the Windows XP Plus! pack's "Speaker Correction". Finally, in some cases, the DirectSound support from your sound card may be quieter than the waveOut support, in which case you can switch to use waveOut and recapture that extra volume.
[For Windows XP, the Volume Control is not shown by default. Go to the Start Menu, scroll up to Settings, open the Control Panel Folder. Then click on "Sounds and Audio Devices", and set the volume here and/or click the "Place volume icon on the taskbar".]

Q: Why does WMP 'crackle' off and on after about 30 seconds into playing my Windows Media file?

A: Some MP3 files converted to ASF using the V4 Encoder can contain more audio in the file than is indicated by the file's internal timestamps. This leads to synchronization problems - leading to the crackling. The fix would be to reconvert the file with the V7 encoder, which will not cause this effect.

Q: Why does WMP show the wrong time for Variable Bitrate (VBR) MP3 files?

A: [From Zeb] 'It is due to whether or not the TLEN (Total Length) field was set appropriately in the ID3v2 version 3 or higher tag when the file was encoded/ripped. If it is set properly, the length shows fine. If it is not, WMP will sample the bit rate of the first few frames and determine the length that way (and with VBR files, it can be inaccurate because of the nature of VBR).

Most new encoders which support VBR MP3 encoding accurately write the TLEN (the latest version of MusicMatch for example).'

Q: Why doesn't WMP produce audio for certain VBR MP3 files?

A: It's a bug in the FhG-supplied MP3 decoder WMP uses where it can't handle certain VBR files. There'd have to be an updated FhG decoder for this to be fixed.

---

Video Questions

Q: I'm having video problems (such as green or pink lines on the video, choppy video, player hangs when playing video, and et cetera).

Q: Why am I getting video flickering?

A: Check for video card driver updates from your vendor, and/or DirectX updates from WindowsUpdate.
If that doesn't help, turn down your hardware acceleration.
If you're using WMP11 on Vista, either double-check for driver updates (directly from your video card vendor as well) or try turning off "Use video smoothing" in WMP's Tools:Options:Performance menu. Also, if your system has an Intel Express Chipset, be sure to get the driver updates from Intel (which will fix crashes, glitching, and no video showing up.)
If you're using WMP7 or newer: Open WMP's Tools:Options:Performance:Advanced menu dialog. First try turning off overlays, and then if that does not help, turn off the Video Mixing Renderer.
If you're using WMP6 (mplayer2.exe): Open WMP's View:Options menu dialog. You'll see a slider there for "Hardware acceleration". Turning this down to None often works around whatever driver bug is creating your issue (and sometimes turning it up helps too).
Some people have also pointed out that unchecking "Start player in Media Guide" in WMP's Tools:Options menu dialog gets a video issue resolved, oddly enough.
If NetMeeting Remote Desktop Sharing is turned on, that can also cause performance problems.
Note that on Windows .Net Server, video hardware acceleration is turned off by default (since it's not beneficial to server performance). Thus video performance will suck. If you want to be using a .Net Server box as a player box(?), you'd need to turn system wide video hardware acceleration up. You can do this via right clicking on the desktop, choose Properties:Settings:Advanced:Troubleshooting and move the acceleration slider all the way to the right. You will also want to turn on DirectDraw - go to the Windows Start button, then at the Run prompt, enter 'Dxdiag'. Click on Display. Click on Enable DirectDraw if present.

If you're having problems staying in full screen mode, you should verify that your screen saver isn't knocking you out of full screen, and check whether turning off WMP's Tools:Options:Performance:Advanced : Enable Full Screen Mode Switch helps.

The full screen controls (on Windows XP and newer) will go away once you stop moving the mouse and the mouse cursor is not hovering over the controls. If you want 'em to go away faster, either uncheck WMP's Tools:Options:Performance:Advanced "Display full-screen controls" or get the TweakMP Power toy from WMPlugins.com and use that to tweak the settings as you would like 'em.

Q: Why don't the Video Settings Enhancement work?

A: They do not work for DVD playback ever - I believe the Help file mentions this. If they're not working for other file types, run "regsvr32 wmp.dll" to fix that up.

Q: Why is my video "zoomed" in so that I can't see the whole picture? I only see a small portion of it?

A: The latest nVidia drivers support a "Zoom" setting. Presumably this is turned on on your machine. Turn it off and things should work fine. On Windows XP, this is under the Display control panel, under the Settings tab in the Advanced button, then go to the Video Overlay settings.

Q: Why does video immediately go to full-screen mode no matter what?

A: You have the Clone setting set under your NVidia drivers NView settings. Turn that off and you should be happier.

Q: Why does WMP9 show my files using the "wrong"/incorrect/stretched height/width?

A: The old renderer ignored the aspect ratio setting in the files - the Video Mixing Renderer (VMR) pays attention to it and sends it down to the system... which then may do the wrong thing for some NTSC/PAL ratios.
What you'd want to do is go to WMP's Tools:Options:Performance:Advanced menu option and uncheck "Use Video mixing renderer". This will cause your performance to suffer, though.
You can contact Product Support and get an actual fix for this issue here.

Q: Why does WMP crash in the middle of setup?

A: You're running old NVidia (or ATI) drivers: either get newer ones, completely turn down video hardware acceleration system-wide for the duration of the install, or reinstall the ones you have.

Q: Video doesn't show up unless I maximize the window, clip the window (put another window in front it, etc....).

A: You need to turn down video hardware acceleration: your video card driver is buggy.

Q: Why does WMP display a visualization instead of the video for my file?

A: You're either missing a codec, or the codec isn't working. This should be helpful.

Q: How do I get video to show up in the player on my second monitor (dual monitor / multi-monitor)?

A: Turn off NetMeeting's Remote Desktop Sharing.

Q: How do I get the player to go full-screen on my second monitor?

A: If it only ever goes full-screen on the primary monitor - just go to the Windows' Start:Settings:Control Panel:Display's Settings tab and make the secondary monitor your primary monitor.

---

Visualization Questions

Q: Where can I find more visualizations?

A: The following sites offer WMP visualization plug-ins:

• WMPlugins.com.
• Windows Media visualization download site.
• Windows Media Player Bonus Pack, complete with new vizzes.
• Lucian's Dancing Stick Figures. Very cool.
• GOOM! (alternate source at GOOM!, but it's harder to find the binaries there)
• G-Force 2.5 viz. Pretty trippy and cool.
• Glass3D's Animator 2.0 visualization.
• WildTangent. Tons of 3d eye candy vizzes. Looks like they've stopped shipping this.
• Napier's Bones vizzes. Supposedly extra responsive/extra syncronized visualizations.
• TwistedPixel viz. Presettable 3d coolness.
• Polyphone Software.
• PixelTrip. Cool 3d looking viz.
• Thank You Mr. Hood. A disco floor-ish 3d viz.
• MusicTech. Technical vizzes.
• Pioneer Japan visualizations. Looks just like a Pioneer CD deck. This probably won't install on your system - I had to extract the files out using WinZIP, then install the skin and register the viz.
• RabidHamster new r4 stand-alone viz (+ extra scenes).

Additionally, SyntheSoft offers an app that can make WinAMP vizzes work with WMP (by hosting the AVS within an external window). Interesting and works well, but pegs my CPU.

If you want to build your own visualizations, this should be a good starting place.

Q: How do I get WMP's visualization to visualize the line-in of my sound card? Say a live performance?

A: Get Ianier Munoz's Line In plug-in for WMP. This is one of my favorite plug-ins for WMP. There's also the Whitecap plug-in, which I haven't tried.

Q: Why don't visualizations show up?

A: Make sure the "View:Now Playing Tools:Show Visualizations" menu option is checked in WMP. Note that visualizations do not work for MIDI. Additionally, visualizations for analog CD playback only work within Windows XP , and are not supported in WMP7.

Q: When I use Plenoptic in fullscreen mode, it doesn't work. Ambience works fine...

A: According to the guy who wrote Plenoptic, this only occurs on the ATI Mach 64 video card, and is due to a problem in the card's DirectDraw support. Turning off DirectDraw acceleration using DxDiag.exe (part of DirectX 7 and newer) might make this work, but he was never able to get this card to work. Some other cards may not support Plenoptic in various fullscreen resolutions: changing the resolution may help fix this. Generally Plenoptic will work for any card that isn't giving us back bad data on the capabilities that card supports.

Q: I'm getting visualizations in place of video...

A: This should help.

Q: How do I turn off visualizations?

A: Using WM Player 9 Series or newer, right-click on the visualization and choose "No Visualization" when in Full Mode. In Skin mode, you would need to use the Null visualization.
In skin mode, you can use a Null visualization: save it to someplace on your hard drive, run "regsvr32 nullvis.dll" on the file, and you'll have a Null visualization that doesn't do anything.
If you're not using WM Player 9 Series: Make sure the "View:Now Playing Tools:Show Visualizations" menu option is not checked in WMP. If it is checked, uncheck it.
In Media Player on Windows XP, you can also use the Album Art visualization in Full Mode.
The Null Visualization has become part of the Windows Media Player Power Toys nowadays.

---

Skins

Q: Where can I find cool skins for WMP?

A: There are over 700 skins I've downloaded myself - if you look around, you'll usually find something interesting. Here's the sites where I know you can find WMP skins, ordered by the date that I ran across them. I've used strikeout to mark the sites that apparently no longer have the skins on the site: the skins might still be there (if the site is), but I couldn't find them any longer.

Sites you can submit and download skins at:

sites higher on list are updated more frequently
• WinCustomize,
• Windows Media Plugins.com,
• DeviantArt (a particular highlight is JafoWMP - the site is hard to sort through, but has a bunch of good skins),
• Customize.org's skin collection,
• Romanda's skins,
• Howard University skin contest (some good stuff),
• Angell's Heaven's skin collection (a quite good collection of the various skins around the net),
• The WindowsMedia site
• Hong Kong Windows Media site,
• Skinz.org (massively ad-laden - get something like Popup Ad Filter before going here),
• DeskMod,
• (Russian skin site) (has some hard to find skins),
• LotsofSkins.com,
• PCDesktops skins (BeOs, Mac-ish skins for WMP),
• Dezina skins,
• CNet,
• Zach's Big Big But Unofficial List of Skins (my site - just a simple dump for now),
• Various Nokia/Motorola skins. The site is hard to figure out, but there's a couple 'cute' skins that look like your favorite Nokia or Motorola product.

If you want to design skins, you can find the WMP SDK on-line here (and also for download here). Additionally, the Windows Media Player 7 Handbook and the Windows Media Player for Windows XP Handbook both have information on how to make skins. (Amazon.com link provided for reference- you can get or browse these at many other places.) There's a user-written tutorial here that's a good basic start. This tutorial covers skinning the Smartphone 2002 WMP.

Q: Why do I get an "Unspecified XML Parse Error" (0x8007007B) trying to switch to Compact mode?

A: You need to first select a skin to use in the Skin Chooser before you can use Compact mode. :)

Q: Why am I unable to switch to Compact Mode?

A: You have a bad skin set as your current skin. Go to the Skins view within WMP7 and select a different skin to use. This should be fixed in WM Player 9 Series.

Q: How do I find out about creating skins for Windows Media Player?

A: Check out the Windows Media Player SDK (on the Internet), the Windows Media Player Handbook (available at bookstores), and/or - if you're good at XML/JScript - open up a skin you already have on disk with WinZip and figure it out by that example.

Q: How do I create a Windows Media Download (.wmd) or Border (borders) file?

A: See the nice MSDN article or the documentation. There's also some on-line examples here.

Q: I'm using the WinAMP Skin Importer from the WMPlugins and I get an error about a missing file - how do I fix this?

A: For v1 skins like that you'll need baseskin.zip on your system. See here for a link to baseskin.zip.

Note that there is also a WinAMP to WMP PocketPC skin importer, I believe.

Q: Where can I find cool skins for WMP for WinCE?

A: Here's some skins, the official MS page on CE Skins, skins here. The WMP for WinCE Skins SDK is here.

---

Toys and whatnot for WMP

Q: Why isn't the taskbar player functional?

A: The Windows Media Player toolbar in some cases may not show up or the buttons may not be responsive. If you have rebooted and this problem persists, run "regsvr32.exe "c:\program files\windows media player\wmpband.dll"" and "regsvr32.exe c:\windows\system32\wmp.dll". Then restart your system, and the deskband player should now work.

Q: Can I change the timeout for the pop-up (toast) window in the taskbar player?

A: You can do this in v11 by creating a REG_DWORD value named "DeskbandFlyoutTimeout" under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\Preferences . If you set it to 0x0, it'll never show up. If you set it to 0xFFFFFFFF it'll always show up. Anything in between it'll show up for that many milliseconds. The normal setting is I believe 3000ms. If that value is not present, the default is used.

Q: How can I get the player to let me sync to devices at bitrates not already listed in the player's UI?

A: If you're an expert user: Open regedit, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER, Software\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\Preferences. You can create DWORD values under here with the names "WMDMPreferredAudioBitrateValue1", "WMDMPreferredAudioBitrateValue2", "WMDMPreferredAudioBitrateValue3", or "WMDMPreferredAudioBitrateValue4". Those map out to the bps used for the sync. You only need to replace whichever of the four values you want to replace - if you don't create a registry value with that name, WMP will just use the default sync bitrate settings.

Q: Where do I get the PowerToys?

A: They're part of the Media Player for Windows XP Bonus Pack: at this URL. [For reference: the Tray Control is "mpxptray.exe" when installed, and is available in the "Windows Media Player Bonus Pack For Window XP" Start menu folder.]
More Toys are now available at WMPlugins.com. :)

If you're a MSN Messenger user, you can use the plug-ins at Messenger Plus! to get Messenger showing your currently playing WMP tracks. (This is the WMPlus for Messenger, which has also got a page at Neowin.net.

Igx89 wrote this plug-in that does a number of things, most notably allowing you to 'bookmark' where you are so that when you restart the player, the file picks up where you last left off. :)

If you're looking for the Windows Media Player 7.0 Bonus Pack, you can still find it here at CNet.

Q: How do I autosync podcasts in WMP?

This article covers it. There's various podcasting plug-ins for WMP here. Juice and Creative's Zencast are what I've heard the most about.

Q: Why aren't my changes to file lyrics written back to the file in WMP9?

A: Lyrics entered into the file in the player's InfoCenter view are not storied in the file (v9 player bug, fixed in v10). To work around this, you would cut and paste the lyrics from the InfoCenter view into the file, using the player's Advanced Tag Editor or other lyric-entering tool.

I would highly recommend the LyricsAMP plug-in to automatically help you retrieve lyrics for your files when using WMP (other alternatives).

Q: How do I put an icon for WMP in the System Tray?

A: On Windows XP: There's a "Windows Media Player Tray Control" Power Toy in the Windows Media Bonus Pack for Windows XP.
WMP Manager also lets you control WMP from the system tray, and has more functionality than the Tray Control Power Toy.
WM Player 9 Series also installs a "WMP Toolbar" that you can turn on by right-clicking on the Start menu bar, choose "Toolbars", and turning "Windows Media Player" on. Note that Stardock's "TrayServer.exe" blocks WM Player 9 Series from being able to dock.

Elsewhere, use TrayIt!, a freeware app. WMP doesn't natively support minimization to the Tray, but TrayIt! works for any app. (I've briefly verified it works on Windows XP using the Classic style menu bars. Matthew points out that TrayIt! doesn't seem to like the puffy style menu bars: in that case you'd need to use the Windows Media Player Tray Control Power Toy.)

Q: How do I control WMP via infra-red remote control?

A: Evation.com Infrared Kit does this.
Also, StreamZap offers both infra-red and regular remote control support for WMP.
Some people are also fans of ATI's Remote Wonder, which is RF but not IR - which gives you much much increased range.
If you're trying to remotely control WMP from a different computer, the PlayerPal plug-in should be what you'd want.

Q: Can I make the player transparent?

A: With this or PowerMenu, yes. Some video cards really freak out with transparency, though, which is why it's not a Product Feature at this point. :\

Q: How do I remove dead entries (for files that don't exist) from the Media Library?

A: If and only if you are using WMP8, use the Media Library Management Wizard that's included in the PowerToys.
Note that the Media Library Management Wizard is not compatible with Windows Media Player 9 Series. Per Sean: "The Media Library Management Wizard has "grown up" and has most of its functionality now built into Auto Info in MP9Series. Check out Tools|Options|Media Library and check Rename and rearrange music."

There's an official MS article here about cleaning up old entries. I started writing a minor PowerToy that cleans up invalid entries - you can use this app for WMP7 to do this. Note that this powertoy is fully unsupported and was still in a preliminary stage of development when the source code got destroyed due to a hard drive failure. Please do not distribute this. If anybody wants it, have them get it from here with the warning I put here.

Q: How do I rename all of my content according to a new naming scheme?

A: Galley suggests Media Jukebox, Gary recommends eMusic Tag Editor, and Mark recommends Tag and Rename 3.0.
If for some reason you don't want to use that, there's also the Media Library Management Wizard (for use with WMP8 only), but that isn't as full-fledged nor supported.
Windows Media Player 9 Series on Windows XP has a "Rename and rearrange music using media information" under WMP's Tools:Options:Media Library menu options.

---

Specific Error Code Questions

Q: Where's the official WMP error code site?

A: The new good one is here, the old one is here.

Q: I'm getting 0x80030109 ("The docfile has been corrupted") playing back files from a certain web server...

A: The file is being served as the wrong MIME type by the server. First, verify that the file ends with a *lower-case* "wmv", "asf", or "wma". Second, try configuring the server properly.
If the file is on your local system at this point and you're getting this error, you must reobtain a copy of the file from the vendor, as the file is corrupt.

Q: I'm getting 0x80040111 ("ClassFactory cannot supply the requested class") when trying to play back an AVI...

A: The file was created with a 3rd party (non-Microsoft) codec, and is being played back on your system by a 3rd party decoder. Whatever codec is used by that file - this should help you figure that out is broken on your system and needs to be updated.

Q: I'm getting error 0x80040154 when trying to play content?

Q: I'm getting the message "Class Not Registered" trying to play back content ... ?

Q: I'm getting "No such interface supported" (0x80004002) when trying to play back content...

A: This error means that information needed to load the next component in the playback chain is not present.
For WMP10 or WMP9 users: try either reinstalling the player on top of itself or running "regsvr32 quartz.dll".
For Windows Media Player for XP (WMP8), try this.
For non-XP users using WMP7 or older: If you're generally getting this error (against most content and not only against AVI files), you will need to reinstall WMP7 (on top of the existing install) in Reinstall All mode (the second checkbox on the options list during install). If you only have WMP 6.4 and are NOT on Win2K or WinMe:

1. Download mpfull.exe (it's the download available here as "Windows Media Player 6.4 for Win95 and Win NT4").
2. Shut absolutely everything down (notably IE and any multimedia application).
3. Rename quartz.dll and devenum.dll in the system directory (to quartz.bak and devenum.bak or such - this way you can replace them if you need to)
4. Install mpfull.exe

If you are on Win2K or WinMe and the reg file doesn't work, you will have to use the WMP7 installer to fix this issue. You can uninstall WMP7 afterwards, but the WMP6.4 fix will not work on Win2K or WinMe and will Be Bad (since you would be installing an older version of quartz.dll).
If you are only getting this error for specific AVI content, that means that you have a bad version of the AVI codec that that files uses. Figure out which codec that file uses and reinstall the codec from the codec vendor's web site.

Finally, running dxdiag.exe (should already be on your system) may be helpful, since it'll make sure that DirectX is working properly. In some cases a broken DirectX install has caused this error.

Q: I'm getting error 0x80040155 - "Interface not registered."

A: If you're experiencing this error with WMP9, Mike Poz says this means that you should reinstall the player on top of itself. The installer should be at "C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\Installer" on your system already.

Q: I'm getting 0x80040209 - The operation cannot be performed because the pins are not connected.

A: This means that one of your drivers is not performing correctly. Trouble-shooting should entail:

1. Ensuring you have the latest version of DirectX on your system (which can be done via Windows Update)
2. Ensure you have the latest video card drivers, either from Windows Update or your video card provider. Certain multi-monitor scenarios will cause bad video card drivers to not work properly. The fix for this scenario is to disable "Extend my windows desktop onto this monitor" for that monitor. Which basically means you'll want to take that video card back in for a return and get a different non-buggy video card.
3. Ensure that you have the latest audio card drivers, either from Windows Update or from your audio card provider.

Q: Why am I getting 0x80040209 playing back content on my system that has two monitors attached?

A: IIRC, it's a bug unique to Matrox cards, and you'd want to uncheck "Extend my windows desktop onto this monitor" to fix it. Upgrading to DirectX 8.1 might help, but... ?

Q: I'm getting 0x80040218 errors : Can't Find Filters - "no combination of filters could be found to render this stream"...? (Or 0x80040265 for any file played within WMP7 (or newer).)

A: First try running this reg file. If that doesn't work: If you have WMP7, download the installer again and check the "Reinstall All" option. (You can't do do this with WMP on Windows XP, so don't try.) If you only have WMP 6.4 and are NOT on Win2K or WinMe:

1. Download mpfull.exe (it's the download available here as "Windows Media Player 6.4 for Win95 and Win NT4").
2. Shut absolutely everything down (notably IE and any other multimedia applications).
3. Rename quartz.dll and devenum.dll in the system directory (to quartz.bak and devenum.bak or such - this way you can replace them if you need to)
4. Install mpfull.exe

If you are on Win2K or WinMe and the reg file doesn't work, you will have to use the WMP7 installer to fix this issue. You can uninstall WMP7 afterwards, but the WMP6.4 fix will not work on Win2K or WinMe and will Be Bad (since you would be installing an older version of quartz.dll).

If you are on Windows XP, you would have to follow these steps and reinstall WMP.

Q: I get error 0x80040227 - "Operation failed -- the filter is in the wrong state" - when trying to burn CDs.

A: Check here.

Q: I get the error 0x8004022F ("The file format is invalid.") playing back some AVI files from newsgroups. (Or 0x80040265 playing back MPG files).

A: You're trying to play back one part of a multi-part AVI file. This won't work because the AVI index will not be correct for a split file (and thus the file will be rejected by the AVI parser). You have to recombine the file and *then* play it back. Other players may play the file but may crash since the AVI would be kinda broken at this point.

Alternatively (if the file is encoded better), the file may not contain an index chunk - but in that case DirectShow is going to reject it since it requires the normally-optional index, and it still is not going to play in WMP.

Q: I get the error 0x80040295 ("An operation failed due to a certification failure.") playing back a particular file....

A: This error is return by DirectShow when the application does not have a certification for playing back content that requires Secure Channel. This means that the DRM file that you're trying to play back cannot be authenticated for playback on your system.

Q: I get the error 80070003 ("Can't Find Path Specified.") when trying to record CDs.

A: This error in the CD Copy code path may be the result of two things. First, the CD Record path may be set wrong. To fix this, go into WMP's Tools:Options menu and respecify the path that you are copying tracks to. Even if it's set right, just reset it to the location to be sure. If that doesn't help, your Media Library may be corrupt. Usually if this is the case you would know it, as the Media Library pane would not be functioning correctly. I address how to fix this second case here.

Q: Why do I get the error 0xC00D0BB8 (or error 0xc00d1199) trying to play back a file in Windows Media Player 9 Series?

A: The MP3 you are trying to play either uses compressed ID3 headers or an unsynchronized ID3 header or otherwise has to-WMP-unintrepretable ID3v2 data, which the player does not support for security reasons.
If it has unsynchronized ID3 headers, then the Q814129 QFE will allow these files to play back.

Otherwise - if that does not work -, you would need to use a tag editing software program to eliminate the compressed ID3 information. In some cases, you will just need to remove the Comments section, in others you'll need to delete all ID3 tagging on the file. Alternatively, the file could be played in most other players.
A quick way to clean up the file is to open the file up in WinAMP 2.x, right-click on the file in the Playlist window, choose "File Info" and uncheck ID3v1 tag and ID3v2 tag, then click Update. The file should then work fine in WMP.
Alternatively, if you want to use a Tool to do this, you can use the Advanced WMA Workshop.

In some cases, people have gotten error 0xc00d1199 when they've had the wrong audio device selected under WMP's Tools:Options:Devices:Speakers:Properties. Changing that to the correct setting should fix you up.

Q: I'm getting the error message 0xc00d1057 - "A portion of the file cannot be played."

Q: I'm getting the error message 0xc00d109a - "The codec downloaded for this media does not appear to be properly signed. Installation is not possible.."

Q: I'm getting the error message 0xc00d109b - "Windows Media Player cannot play the file. One or more codecs required to play the file could not be found."

Q: I'm getting the error message 0xc00d10d1 - "One or more codecs required to open this content could not be found."

A: See here to help find the missing codec.

Q: Why do I get error 0xC00D10B3 (or 0xC00D10B5) trying to play or download tracks?

A: Either your firewall is blocking WMP from being able to connect to the Internet, or you are offline.

Q: I'm getting error 0xc00d10BD trying to play back DVDs...

A: Usually this error code should indicate that the video card driver isn't functioning properly, and that this should help fix you up. However, evidently DVD XCopy Platinum can also cause this error, so if you have that on your system, you may want to try removing that.

Q: I'm getting error 0xC00d117E - "Windows Media Player did not copy all the selected items. The Player has reduced the recording speed of your CD drive to solve the problem. To copy all the selected items, insert a blank CD in the drive, and try again."

A: See here.

Q: I'm getting error 0xC00d1197 - "Windows Media Player cannot find the specified file." when trying to play back audio CDs.

A: See here.

Q: Why do I get error 0xC00D119a or 0xc00d116a trying to play DVDs?

A: See here (video driver side) and here (decoder side).

Q: I'm getting error 0xc00d11ab...

A: If you're getting it trying to burn a CD, go here.

Q: I'm getting error 0xc00d11ba...

A: If you're getting it trying to listen to audio, go here.

Q: I'm getting error 0xc00d11bb, "Windows Media Player cannot play the file because the specified protocol is not supported. In the Open URL dialog, try opening the file using a different transport protocol (for example, 'http:' or 'rtsp:')" - how do I fix this?

A: Rename the folder "%USERPROFILE%\local settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows Media\10.0".

Q: I'm getting error 0xc00d11cd...

A: That's most unfortunate - that's the error code for "Unknown Error", so that error doesn't actually mean anything. Your encountering of this error may have absolutely nothing to do with anybody else who encounters this errror. You will need to figure out what's going on. Telling someone you hit error "0xc00d11cd" means absolutely nothing, sadly. If you do not supply information about the specifics here, absolutely no one can help you.

Note that one case where this will happen (or you'll get error 0xc00d1199 or 0x800c0008 instead) is where you're trying to access WMV or ASF content on the Internet and you have Internet Explorer's Media Bar turned on. Unfortunately, IE has their own player for the Media Bar, so you'd need to either bug IE product support to fix this, or you'd need to turn the Media Bar off (which would be my suggestion regardless). To disable IE6's Media Bar from taking playback, click the Media button (on the IE Toolbar). Then click Media Options in that new pane, then Settings, and then uncheck "Play web media in the bar".

Customized authentication dialogs will also cause error 0x800c0008, since WMP can't show 'em, and IE can't hand off the credential to WMP. In general if you're getting error 0x800c0008, save the file to disk first and then play it back.

There's some more ideas on this error here.

Q: I'm getting error 0xc00d119f trying to burn CDs...

A: This is an IMAPI burning failure. See here to fix this.

Q: I'm getting error 0xc00d11D4 trying to stream content...

A: This is "Error: Invalid request." In the past, this has been fixed for some by them reverting back to their old proxy settings. In some further cases, unchecking "UDP" in WMP's Tools:Options:Network has helped solve it.

Q: I'm getting error 0xc00d11da trying to play protected content...

A: This is the best fix write-up I know of.

Q: Why am I getting error 0xc00d11f8 - "Windows Media Player encountered an error when reading the CD-ROM drive in digital mode. You can try to use digital mode again, or you can switch the Player to analog mode."?

A: You need to go to the player's Tools:Options:Devices menu option, select the Properties for that drive and change to use Analog mode. If that doesn't work, read on...
I've heard that "DVD Region Killer" caused this problem for one person. They ran System Restore to get help get rid of it, and then things worked fine again.

If that still doesn't work for you, you'd have to set the registry values "CDRecordDigital" and "CDPlayDigital" to REG_DWORD 0 under HKEY_CURRENT_USERS\Software\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\Preferences for WMP7. For WMP8 and WMP9, which support multiple CD drives with independent settings, you will have a registry key under the Preferences key that will have these settings. Change those settings there and you should be fine.

Q: Why do I get the error 0xc00d274C ("A problem occured during the security upgrade. Try again later.") when trying to obtain a DRM license or to individualize the machine?

A: You need to reinstall Internet Explorer - the Microsoft code signing certificate is not functional on your box.

Q: Why do I get error 0xC00d2751 trying to play back content?

A: This error indicates that your system profile changed. KB891664 should be helpful here.
On Windows Me: Read How to Fix This. (Although now this page says to just install WMP9.)

Q: Why do I get error 0xc00d2754 ("The licenses for your media files are corrupted. Contact Microsoft product support.") trying to play back files?

A: Cesar says that this page is probably the best thing to try. If not, contact Microsoft product support so that they can work on a better fix for this!

Note that there is an article being put together to try to address this issue, so PLEASE make sure you contact product support. If you have repro steps so that we can understand how you got into this state, it would be WONDERFUL of you to post those repro steps to the "microsoft.public.windowsmedia.player" newsgroup (as well as making sure that product support has their hot little hands on the repro steps!) so that the best possible fix/article can be made.

If you're getting this error just trying to record CDs to your hard drive, turn Personal DRM off. To turn DRM off for all content you create in the future, go to WMP7's Tools:Options:CD Audio and uncheck "Enable Personal Rights Management" (this is under Tools:Options:Copy Music, "Protect Content" under newer versions of WMP), which will result in DRM-free content for all content ripped from that point forward.

If nothing else works and you feel comfortable not contacting product support and are self-assured that you can handle mussing up your system, browse to the *hidden* not visible folder "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\DRM" and rename this folder to something like "DRM.BAK". Now create a NEW DRM folder. Your licenses have all been removed now.
Now open regedit, and browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\DRM. Rename this DRM key to "DRM.BAK" or similar.
Finally, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows Media\WMSDK\General. Rename this General key to "General.bak" or similar.
At this point, all of your old licenses have been lost, but you should be finally good to go again.
If you want/wanted any other resolution to this problem, you have to contact product support. It's uncertain whether they'd be able to do anything, but they're the only people who have a chance here.

Q: Why am I getting error 0xC00D2760?

A: Your system's security catalogs don't contain up-to-date Trust certificates - you can get them at Windows Update or by updating to Internet Explorer 6 SP1.

Q: Why am I getting error 0xC00D2845 - "The security upgrade cannot be performed because the server is not available. Try again later."?

A: Still unknown to me. The relevant questions are:
What ISP are you using to connect to the Internet?
What is your connection speed?
What installed Premium content services do you have installed as listed under WMP's Premium Services pane? Napster, Movielink, etc... ?
What exact version of WMP are you using? (Check WMP's Help:About menu for this)
What exact version of Internet Explorer are you using? (Check IE's Help:About menu for this)
What exact OS version are you using? (You can check the version of kernel32.dll on your system to know this version number)
What server are you having this trouble with? (Is there a particular file or URL?)
How are you connected to the Internet? Is there a personal firewall, NAT, proxy, or are you directly connected to the Internet?
Is your system clock set correctly? It needs to be for security purposes.

Q: I'm getting error code number...

A: 0x80040216 or 0x80040256.

---

Q: Why am I getting an internal application error trying to launch the player?

A: If the player is properly installed (and a simple reinstall of the player on top of itself will ensure that), then the only way you can possibly get this error is if something external to the player is not functioning fully and thus is breaking the player. You probably wouldn't notice that problem with other applications as the player uses more advanced interfaces than those other applications use. In some cases, running "regsvr32 jscript.dll" has been known to fix up the issue. On Vista you will need to do this from a CMD.exe prompt run as an administrator.

That being said, if you installed a "codec pack", that's quite likely the source of your problem. Never install any codec packs unless you specifically know that the company in question is guaranteed to be reliable. Many install "mmswitch.ax", for example, which will crash the player.
If you did not install a codec pack, this is almost 99% certainly a driver issue. If "mplayer2.exe" is functioning on your system (which would ensure that the video and sound drivers are working largely correctly), then it's most likely the CD-ROM drivers. This should fix you up, then. If not, it'd be time to contact actual technical support.

This has reportedly been fixed for one user's Windows Me box with an Internet Explorer 6 repair install, but ... YMMV.

Q: Since I installed WMP7 (or Adaptec), my machine won't hibernate / shut-down / shutdown / sleep ?

A: It's an Adaptec issue. Uninstall the Adaptec plug-in. The latest Adaptec driver updates are here, but I don't believe this issue has been fully resolved yet.

Q: Why am I getting a crash in wmpcore.dll?

A: Not sure. Do NOT uninstall and then clean install, but instead *reinstall* the player (not from Windows Update - download it from the Windows Media Download Site) and choose Reinstall All mode. This is superior to uninstall/install.

Q: Why am I getting a crash in "cinemst32.dll" when starting WMP?

A: This is a crash in the Cinemaster decoder. This page has information on trouble-shooting your CineMaster decoder (also see this page for more info).

Q: Why am I getting a crash in "mmswitch.ax" when running WMP?

A: Because you installed a pirated software package that installs a bad version of this file. The working version (0.97) can be found at Morgan Multimedia. If that doesn't work for you, run "regsvr32 /u mmswitch.ax" to unregister that file, then rename "mmswitch.ax" (to "mmswitch.ax_" or something like that) on your system to stop the crashing.

Q: Why am I getting a crash in "awrdscdc.ax"?

A: The Audible audio filter isn't working correctly. Rename this file on your system temporarily to fix this issue, if nothing else works. Note that the Audible filter should only crash if unknown content is encountered.

Q: Why am I getting the error message "msdmo.dll is not a valid Windows image" when starting WMP?

A: It's a file version problem. Rename the file msdmo.dll on your system to "msdmo.bak" (msdmo.dll should be in system32, since you'd be running into this on a WinMe -> Win2K upgrade) and then reinstall WMP on top of your existing install - this will expose the special Reinstall All option that is the best option for trouble-shooting. [File version should be "4.90.3000.0" on the bad file.]

Q: On Windows XP, selecting Play All or double-clicking on files launches WMP with an error such as "Unable to find playable file". Right-clicking and using "Open works". Why?

A: At this point it is known that at least Grisoft.com's AVG anti-virus software breaks WMP's playlist generator. Either upgrading to Windows XP SP1, uninstalling the AVG software and using different anti-virus software, or reconfiguring their software not to break WMP would be your solutions. Additionally, running this reg file will restore your WMA/WAV/MP3 PerceivedTypes settings once you reboot, which some apps might have broken on your system. There's a KB article on this here.

Q: Why am I getting a white timer overlaying the video playback window (displaying the frame count)?

Q: Why am I getting a message saying "Assert in ..."?

A: Presumably you have installed the *debug* version of DirectX 8 from the DirectX 8 SDK CD. Reinstall the *retail* build from this CD and these will go away. It is not possible to run the debug version of DirectX 8 without this timer overlay. I believe that the DirectX in Windows XP does not create this timer overlay, but am not certain. [David points out that the overlay comes from quartz.dll, so replacing just this file with the retail version of the file would put you in an indeterminate state, but one in which you would no longer have the overlay.]

Q: How do I have the player auto-add new content to my Media Library?

A: Go to WMP's Tools:Options:Media Library menu option and choose "Monitor Folders".

Q: Why when I try to create a new playlist or add tracks, do I get an error message that says "Unspecified Error" or "Error 0x80040216" or "0x80040E37" or "Can't find drives" or "0x800C0065"?

Q: Why doesn't "Search for Media Files..." work?

Q: Why do I get a hang or a crash if I select "Get Names"?

Q: Why am I unable to add folders to my empty "Monitored Folders" list?

A: You need to rebuild the Media Library... see the next question.

Q: How do I rebuild a broken Media Library?

A: Note that if you do need to replace your Media Library, it is most highly recommended that you update MDAC on your box so as to avoid corruption in the future. The Microsoft KB article for fixing WMP11 library corruption is here.

In WMP11 on Vista, please make sure you have this update - this will make your library more reliable. Then: the library is per user and can be found at "%LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft". Shut down IE, Media Center, WMP, and anything else running (such as the Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service). Then rename the "Media Player" folder there. At that point WMP should work correctly again.
In WMP11 on XP, the library is per user and can be found at "%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Media Player\CurrentDatabase_360.wmdb". In some extreme cases (such as when you can not add any folders to be scanned in the supplied dialog) you would need to shut down WMP and stop the "Window Media Player Network Sharing Service". Then you would need to rename the folder "%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Media Player". At that point WMP should work correctly again.
In WMP10, the library is per user and can be found at "%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Media Player\CurrentDatabase_219.wmdb". You can first try renaming the file. If that doesn't work, create a second user account. That user should have a working library in WMP. Copy that user's library over to your original user account, and you should be working fine then.

In Windows Media Player 9 Series, the library is per user and can be found at "%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Media Player\CurrentDatabase_59R.wmdb" on a Windows XP system. On other systems, just look for "CurrentDatabase_59R.wmdb" on the system. To rename it, just add ".bak" to the file.

If you cannot find the library: open a DOS/command prompt ("cmd.exe" on NT/XP, "command" on Win9x) and run:
        cd \
        dir /s /b c*.wmdb
and that'll list out all the WMP libraries on the system.

For Windows Media Player 7 or 8: Rename (or delete if you're sure) "wmplibrary_v_0_12.db" and your Media Library will be toast. On Windows 9x it'll be found at "c:\windows", on NT (Win2000/WinXP), it'll be found at "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Media Index" [This is a HIDDEN directory]. Rename this file to something such as "wmplibrary_v_0_12.bak", then open WMP and see if the corruption is fixed. If it was not, delete the new "wmplibrary_v_0_12.db" and rename the old one back.
Once the library has been nuked/replaced, you should also enter "regsvr32 wmpcore.dll" into the Windows' Start:Run prompt to reregister WMP's database schema. This is only necessary for WMP7/WMP8.

Once you have renamed/recreated the Media Library, you will need to use WMP's Tools:Search for Media option in order to restock your media library.

Symptoms of a broken library are: inability to copy CDs via WMP, inability to access the Media Library, inability to search the hard drive for media, inability to create playlists, etc.

Q: How do I back-up the Media Library?

A:
If you are using Windows Media Player 11:

1. Find your copy of "CurrentDatabase_360.wmdb" on the system (see here for where to find it) and make a back-up copy. This will make a back-up of the ratings and play count, which are not saved to the files themselves. All other data is written back to the file system, so if you don't care about ratings or play count, you don't need to back up the Media Library
2. You will also need to make a back-up of the "My Music" directory's "My Playlists" folder, which contains your playlists. But this is part of your media files, so if those should be easy to just copy.
3. If you wish to back up your ratings into the files themselves, get the Ratings Migration power-toy from WMPlugins.com.
4. Play counts are only backed up with the Media Library. If you wanted to nuke the play counts, you'd simply nuke the Media Library.

If you are using Windows Media Player 10:

1. Find your copy of "CurrentDatabase_219.wmdb" on the system (see here for where to find it) and make a back-up copy. This will make a back-up of the ratings and play count, which are not saved to the files themselves. All other data is written back to the file system, so if you don't care about ratings or play count, you don't need to back up the Media Library
2. You will also need to make a back-up of the "My Music" directory's "My Playlists" folder, which contains your playlists.
3. If you wish to back up your ratings into the files themselves, get the Ratings Migration power-toy from WMPlugins.com.
4. Play counts are only backed up with the Media Library. If you wanted to nuke the play counts, you'd simply nuke the Media Library.

If you are using Windows Media Player 9 Series:

1. Find your copy of "CurrentDatabase_59R.wmdb" on the system (see herefor where to find it) and make a back-up copy. This will make a back-up of the ratings and play count, which are not saved to the files themselves. All other data is written back to the file system, so if you don't care about ratings or play count, you don't need to back up the Media Library
2. You will also need to make a back-up of the "My Music" directory's "My Playlists" folder, which contains your playlists.
3. If you wish to back up your ratings into the files themselves, get the Ratings Migration power-toy from WMPlugins.com.
4. Play counts are only backed up with the Media Library. If you wanted to nuke the play counts, you'd simply nuke the Media Library.

If you are using an earlier version of Windows Media Player:

1. Find your copy of "wmplibrary_v_0_12.db" on the system (see here for where to find it) and make a back-up copy. This will make a back-up of the playlists.
2. You will also need to make a back-up of the "My Music" directory's "My Playlists" folder, which contains your playlists.

Note that all other modifications to the files are written back to the files using WMP8 or WMP9, so if you wanted to back up those kinds of things, you'd just want to back up the files themselves.

Q: I'm getting "Error: metadata is stale" trying to edit my track information.

A: This means that your system clock is set wrong. Please update it to the actual time. :)

Q: How do I redirect the "My Music" folder?

A: Get TweakUI and set the alternate location using this tool (it's in My Computer/Special Folders or such).

Q: How do I directly edit or access the Media Library?

A: From within the Media Player interfaces only. Since the guts of the Media Library have changed substantially from version to version, any app directly talking/reading the Media Library outside of WMP APIs would be broken. If you're just trying to print playlists or such, that's addressed here.

Note that Dan P. put together a sample Power Toy JavaScript file to view the contents of your library in IE, and I'm currently trying to prettyify it and make it more usable.

Q: Can WMP do anything with cdplayer.ini?

A: Not a thing. CDPlayer.ini doesn't include enough information about the relevant CDs to be useful in any fashion to more advanced applications such as WMP.

Q: I keep getting "Updating Track Information in Media Library and My Music" while trying to use the player and want this to stop happening!

A: Each time WMP is unable to obtain metadata for a CD (be it because the computer is offline or because the CD database doesn't have the info for that CD), it writes to "C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Application Data\Microsoft\Media Player\OfflineUpdates.dat" (on Windows XP- I don't know this information for Win9x). Later, WMP when online will periodically poll the CD database server for information on these CDs. If you press Cancel on this update, it won't happen again in that player session (ie, until you restart the player). Or you can simply delete the "offlineupdates.dat" file, in which case all pending CD information updates will be canceled - and the dialog won't show up again until you rip CDs that don't have metadata. [Note that the "Application Data" folder containing "OfflineUpdates.dat" is HIDDEN by default, so you will need to turn on Show Hidden Files And Folders under Explorer's Tools:Options:View menu options if you want to search for this file yourself. And since the file is hidden, "Search" will not necessarily find this file.]

Q: My app/script/skin can't access the Media Library fully...

A: You'll need to go into WMP's Tools:Options menu and set the Media Library access rights appropriately.

Q: What privileges/permissions do I need to assign regular (non-admin) users in Win2K for them to be able to use WMP fully?

A: They need read/write access to the folder "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Media Index", and the file "wmplibrary_v_0_12.db" that is in that folder. Note that these privileges should be automatically set correctly in Windows XP. However, in Windows XP, you could be afflicted by this.
In some cases (streaming media, radio), the user will also need Full Control on: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{203b1eed-db9f-40fb-87bd-1990982017d2}\Plugins .

Q: While logged in as administrator, I cannot install the Windows Media Services SDK (or other NetShow/Windows Media v4 install packages). It says I am not an administrator. How do I fix this?

A: Log onto your machine with a local admin account to install the package, rather than your domain account. This is fixed in Windows Media 7 era setup packages.

Q: Why does WMP reset the track information for my MP3s when I Search For Media?

A: The V7 SDK doesn't support track information (ID3) write-out - the edits are not saved to the file itself. Apps like ID3 Editor let you edit the ID3 tags on MP3s and write the info back to the file.
This is fixed in Media Player for XP (WMP8) and all later releases.

Q: Why does WMP change my Genre information from "80's" to "Folk"?

A: (Thanks to Rob Z.) WMP sees numbers as ID3 Tag identifiers, so converts 80 to the ID3 equivalent "Folk".

Q: How do I edit the track information for multiple tracks at once within the Media Library?

A: Select multiple tracks, then right-click and choose "Edit Selected".

Q: How do I edit the track number information for my files?

A: Go into the shell (Explorer) and view the files. Right-click on a particular file, select Properties, then Summary, then click Advanced and edit it there. If the file was converted instead of encoded by the player, in some cases you will not be able to edit the track number there. In that case, you would want to use "Windows Media Attribute Editor" from the Windows Media Resource Kit (the Attribute Editor is part of the Windows Media 7 Resource Kit Components that are always installed with the WMRK).

Q: Media Player on Windows XP shows album art for albums ripped with it. How do I get it to download album art for previously ripped WMA content?

A: If you right-click on the Album title within the Album listing in the left column within the Media Library, you can choose Find Album Info (previously known as Update Names) to get the album art.

Q: How do I add my own album art to be displayed?

A: In WMP11, the easiest and absolute best way is to drag and drop the art to those tracks within WMP.

The official article is here now. And Ries has a tool to help fix up album art here, which also has some other steps to help clean up the library.

[Thanks to Mike.] If that doesn't help: if you don't like the album art or have a folder of downloaded music that you want to add art to, browse to the folder in question within the shell. Right-click on the album folder. Choose Properties. Click the Customize tab. In the Folder Pictures section, click the "Choose Picture..." button and then select the image you'd like to use.

Alternatively, you can simply select any graphic from your browser and save it inside of the folder containing the music in question and name the saved image "Folder.jpg". When you now play any music that resides in that folder, the Media Player will automatically pick it up and display it. "Folder.jpg" should ideally be 200x200, and "AlbumArtSmall.jpg" should ideally be 75x75. These are suggestions: you can use other sizes within reason, but more than twice as big or half as small may cause problems. AlbumArtSmall is what gets displayed when there's not room to display Folder.jpg.

I personally have found that searching through CDNow.com enables one to recover almost all album art. Go the list of all the albums by that artist to get the small picture to use as AlbumArtSmall.jpg, and go to the specific album page to get a bigger picture to use as Folder.jpg. For your "my mix" collections or for albums from friends, etc., I personally use pictures of the friend in question as Folder.jpg.

If you're a nut like I am and want to make sure you have album art for all of your albums, a "lazy" way of doing that is opening a command prompt, going to the root of your Music folder, and entering:

dir /s /b /a:d > folders.txt
dir /s /b /a:-d folder.jpg > art.txt

, then replace "\Folder.jpg" in art.txt with nothing (ie, ""), and then windiff the two files. Any folder present in folders.txt but not in art.txt still needs album art.

To remove embedded album art, use the Advanced Tag Editor.

Note that if you have multiple files selected, Advanced Tag Editor will likely not be able to view/edit the album art for those files.

Note that in the 9 Series player, there's a new album art naming scheme that is meant to reduce collisions if you have multiple albums in the same folder. If you want your album art to preempt the new-style-named art, you'll need to paste the art directly into the file using the 9 Series player's Advanced Edit feature.
Per Dan, the 9 Series player looks up art in this order:

1. Check for art in file
2. Check for folder customization
3. Check for Art with GUIDs in the name (more accurate)
4. heck for Folder.JPG and old desktop.ini (if desktop.ini has newer player version, we don't show folder.jpg because it's "stale")

There's an album art fetching tool here that some guy published. I can't vouch for it, but if you want try it, it might be interesting.

Q: Why is Album Art not downloading for my CDs anymore?

A: (Thanks to Dean) Your Internet Cache is full. Go to IE : Tools : Internet Options. Now under Temporary Internet Files either "Delete Files..." or change your Settings to increase your cache size.

Q: How can I have album art for each individual track within a folder?

A: WMP supports this, but doesn't allow you to set this up. You'll want to install MusicMatch 7.x or newer. Open the track in question within MusicMatch. Open the album art in question in MSPaint.exe or similar. Copy the image in question to the clip board (usually you'd just need to select the region in question and press CTRL-C ). Then go back to MusicMatch and use the Edit:Playlist Track Tags menu dialog's "Paste from Clipboard" option. Exit MusicMatch - voila - album art in the WMA/MP3. Note that Folder.jpg (and AlbumArtSmall.jpg) will override individual album art when using WMP9 - either use the relevant Folder.jpg to show individual album art or upgrade to the 9 Series player.

Q: Are there any nifty cool apps for editing MP3 and WMA track data?

A: Yes - check out eMusic Tag Editor for one.

Q: Why am I getting a crash in mcicda.dll / mcicda.drv?

A: I don't know. One person disabled DMA for the CD-ROM (go to My Computer, choose Properties, go to the Device Manager tab, select the applicable drive under "Disk Drives", double-click to bring up properties, and the checkbox is under Settings according to the wise Tess) and it cleared itself up. Also, it seems the IMSI CD Copier Pro and Windows Media Player don't get along. I personally found that it (CD Copier Pro) makes W2K with or without WMP unstable, but your mileage may vary. Virtual CD has a WMP compatibility update that might help. Generally Virtual CD programs don't seem to get along well with WMP. Paragon CD Emulator is reported to conflict with WMP as well.

Q: I get the error "MMSystem296" when trying to play back AVI files.

A: See this page for details on how to fix this. The installer for Windows Media Player 9 Series will automatically fix this problem if it detects it.

Q: My system hangs when I start WMP...

Q: I have a SoundBlaster Live audio card...

A: If you've got a Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live audio card, go update the driver for it. You may also want to turn down video hardware acceleration.

Q: Why does WMP freeze when I try to use it or not start at all?

A: One report came in that this was due to "SurfinGuard Pro". "Norton's Auto Protect" has also caused one person to not be able to use WMP.

Q: Why does WMP play too fast or too slow?

A: We use the audio clock from your sound card to time things, and it's not working correctly. Per Patrick:

This sounds like a problem I've seen on some sound cards. Please try reducing your audio hardware acceleration level in the 'Sounds and Audio Devices' control panel. After opening the panel, click 'Advanced' under speaker settings, then 'Performance' and try moving the hardware acceleration down to different levels. I'm looking at my XP machine, so the buttons may be a little different in other versions of the OS. [Note that you can also access the audio hardware acceleration slider in the app "dxdiag.exe" (already on your system) on the "Sound" tab.]

Please note that by reducing hardware acceleration to none, you will lose any 5.1 audio support your sound card has (if any).

If that doesn't help, see "I'm having sound problems" for how to fix this.

Q: How do I get WMP to use less memory/CPU?

A: WM Player 9 Series should have very good performance. If you're not using WM Player 9 Series or want even better performance, you can further reduce processor usage by:
* Go to View:Now Playing Tools and unselect "Show Visualizations".
* Go to the Now Playing View and make sure that the Graphic Equalizer and SRS Wow Effects are turned off.
Alternatively, you can this registry file that will turn off the EQ, SRS, and Vis next time you start the player. It just changes those exact same settings for you automatically if you're lazy
On Win2K, one little-known way of temporarily freeing up memory is minimize an application after it starts up. Note that this is true of *all* apps.

Also, WMP9 has a couple optional features that you can turn on that can use the CPU. Turn off "Update my music files" and "Monitor Folders" in WMP's Tools:Options:Media Library if you want to further decrease CPU usage (if you ever turned those on in the first place, that is).

Q: How do I as a user force WMP7 (or newer) to download content instead of playing it immediately?

A: Right-click on the content's link within your browser and choose "Save As". Save the file locally and then open it with WMP. WMP6 still has the "Save" option under the File menu, and Media Player for XP brings it back. [It'll be in future revisions as well.]
For files you've already played back with WMP but not saved locally, you can probably find it in your browser's cache. Note that streamed files by design are not cached locally nor savable locally, so you'd have to contact the content provider about whether or not they would allow you to download their streamed files.

Q: How do I as a content provider force WMP to download my ASF instead of streaming it?

A: There's various ways of doing this. You can add "?mswmext=.com" to your URL (taking advantage of an undocumented/unsupported Feature of WMP's progressive download code which is not supported past WMP7.1), use ASFCopy (from the Windows Media Rights Manager package) to add Content-Disposition headers (this would also be very for you to do in ASP or CGI), or use a Borders (.WMD) file (documented sparsely in the Windows Media Player SDK, documented better here) to install a package containing the ASF file(s).

Q: How do I clear the player's Most Recently Used/History list/Location bar under the File Menu, as well as the AutoComplete list?

A: In WMP9 or WMP10, go to WMP's Tools:Options:Privacy menu option and click "Clear History". You can also turn off the MRU here.
For previous versions, see the article on this here. Or you can click here to clear the History list or here to clear the Radio History list. Note that the PowerToys also include this functionality, as the above article says. If you are on Win95 and this reg file doesn't work, you'll need to either use the PowerToys or manually delete these registry keys:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\Player\RecentURLList]
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\Player\RecentFileList]

If you're STILL seeing files in the "Open File..." dialog on Win2k+ or WinMe, it's coming from an additional user-specific system-wide MRU list. This is *not* specific to WMP. You would need to delete the following keys:
[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ComDlg32\OpenSaveMRU]
[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\RunMRU]
to clear these settings. However, that at least clears ALL MRUs on the system if not more (my system is still running...), so do this at your own risk.

You may also want to go to WMP's Tools:Options and clear the "Add items to Media Library when played" checkbox, if you're worried about other users on that box seeing your files. [Available on WMP8 and subsequent releases.]

Q: How do I turn off the Most Recently Used list within WMP?

A: This is only possible with Media Player for XP and later.
In WM Player 9 Series, go to WMP's Tools:Options:Privacy and check "Do not save file or URL history in the Player."
In WMP8, Run this reg file to clear your system and WMP MRU menus, as well as turning the MRU off. Run this reg file to reenable your system and WMP MRU menus. The Media Player Tray Control included with the Media Player for Windows XP Power Toys include this functionality.

Q: I have a question about WMP's privacy policy...

A: If you have WMP7 (or newer), you should be able to review it under WMP's Help menu dialog. I urge the paranoid to sniff WMP's network traffic if you're hyper-concerned and don't trust the published policy: nobody on the WMP team would tolerate abuse of people's privacy. MS just can't do that kind of stuff - someone would sue MS's pants off. A sniff and analysis of network traffic should easily confirm that for those who have doubts.

Q: Why don't MPEG Layer III .wav files work within Themes?

A: You need an ACM MP3 codec. Install WMP7 or any later version of WMP.

Q: I want more entries in my Radiobar.

A: Okay. This sets the Radiobar to remember 80 stations.

Q: What happened to the RealAudio support?

A: Read. Supposedly you can use RealOne's SuperPass Premium version or MediaCleaner or EO Video or DBPowerAMP (audio-only) to convert RealAudio files to MP3 files, which would be more generally useful.
Supposedly, the program "RealAlternative" (or from here, but avoid the K-Lite Codec Pack, though!!!) lets RA/RM work in WMP and thus gives people an option to not be forced to use RealNetwork's player... but mileage appear to vary pretty greatly here, so if that doesn't work for you, you would have to contact the makers for RealAlternative (and possibly provide them an incentive to help you...) if you wanted to make this work. It really does appear to either randomly work or randomly fail for people. :\

Q: What about QuickTime support?

A: Read.

You can use QuickTime Pro to convert MOV to AVI, and then convert that AVI to WMV. Or you can use Adobe Premiere for that conversion. Or you can use use Discreet's Cleaner XL. Or you can Artech365's MPEG4 Direct Maker, which does MOV to MP4 conversion. Or this website covers conversion too.
Supposedly, the program QuickTime Alternative may work for you, since it includes a DirectShow filter, but your mileage may vary greatly. If you have a problem with it... contact the makers of QuickTime Alternative. It really does appear to either randomly work or randomly fail for people. :\

Q: Can I play the MPEG4 file format (.mp4) within WMP?

A: I believe the options here are this, this, or the Envivio plug-in enables this . Supposedly the best plan is to use Haali Media Splitter combined with FFDShow Tryouts (the July 2007 Beta 3 build), but YMMV. Or you can install Nero 7, which will install an MP4 / M4A plug-in that WMP can use. This lets you play AAC Lossless in WMP...

Q: How do I play OGG Vorbis audio files (.ogg) in WMP?

A: This page covers what you need to play Ogg Vorbis, Speex, Theora, and FLAC in WMP. (Or this should work, but you'd need to upgrade to their 0.9.9.3 release or later. Or just check the Vorbis site for what they list. )

Note that the WMP Tag Support Extender adds APE, FLAC, OGG, and MPEG4 metadata support to the Media Library. (Other link.)

Q: How do I play .SHN audio files in WMP?

A: This should work. :)

Q: How do I play .MOD, .S3M, .XM, .IT, .MTM, and .UXM files in WMP?

A: The DSP-Worx plug-in should work.

Q: How do I play .3gp files in WMP?

A: The best answer I know of is 3ivx's package

Q: How do I use .SUB/VOBSUB caption files in WMP?

A: VobSub should work.

Q: How do I play .MPC (Muse) audio files in WMP?

A: This should work.

Q: How do I play Shoutcast .pls files within WMP?

A: This should work.

Q: What are the WMP command line options?

A: The full set of v9 options are here. For older versions, see here. Or I've summarized them here, with some other stuff that isn't covered in that article:

• /embedding: ?
• /open: just open the file, don't automatically start playing
• /play: start playing the file as soon as possible
• /close: close the file after playback (*only works when used with WMP6 (mplayer2.exe) and only when used with /play!*)
• /fullscreen: start file in fullscreen mode
• /new: use a new instance of the player

** Note that "/fullscreen" and "/new" are not supported in V7. For WMP7 and newer, you would have to use a skin like this in a command line such as:
     wmplayer.exe /layout:fscls.wmz %file.file% if you wanted the player to be in full-screen mode. Or you could embed the player in a web page and script the player into full-screen mode.

For WMP7 and later, WMP also supports:
     wmplayer.exe /layout:"%skinpath%" for WMZ (skin) files.

Additional command lines are "Task" and "Device".
     wmplayer.exe /device:AudioCD "%L"
launchs WMP and plays the CD in question. (WMP7+)
     wmplayer.exe /device:DVD "%L"
launchs WMP and plays the DVD in question. (WMP8+)
     wmplayer.exe /Task:MediaLibrary
     wmplayer.exe /Task:RadioTuner (not supported in WMP10 or newer)
     wmplayer.exe /Task:SkinViewer
     wmplayer.exe /Task:NowPlaying
are all really straight-forward.

     wmplayer.exe /Task:PortableDevice
launches WMP into the Portable Devices (Copy to CD/Device) pane. (WMP8+)
     wmplayer.exe /Task:CDAudio "%L"
launches WMP into the CDAudio (Audio CD/Copy From CD) pane. (WMP8+)

To start WMP8 directly into a playlist, use:
     wmplayer.exe /playlist "%playlistname%"
if it's a user playlist within the Media Library, or export the playlist to file and select "wmplayer.exe /play %playlist.file%" or so.

Note that there is no possible way to open the player with a specific command line from a web page. That would be a security risk, so your browser disallows it. If you wanted to start the player repeating a clip from a web page link, you can use the Repeat element of an ASX. If you want to launch the player full screen on someone else's system and can't use the command line, you would have to embed the player in a web page and use the full screen parameter that the embedded player supports.

Q: Why doesn't WMP7 or later support the Space bar for Play/Pause?

A: Get WMP11 - if the active focus is set to the pertinent playlist, pressing spacebar will then play/pause.

Beyond that: If you open up WMP6 (mplayer2), where space bar *did* act as a pause button everywhere, you'll note that you can't use the TAB button to move between any UI elements. Note that in WMP7 and onwards, there's all sorts of fun stuff to tab to. The "problem" is that for accessibility reasons (which is required), the SPACE button is used to activate a TABbed to item.

So ... the Space bar in WMP7 and later is remapped (and thus cannot be reused for Play/Pause), and our mouseless/sightless friends are probably ecstatic that the space bar does the right thing for them. Note that in WMP11 if you are in the library, if the focus is set to an item, pressing Space will toggle Play/Pause.
You would thus want to either acquire a multimedia keyboard (which has that handy Play/Pause button) or move on...
Rumor has it that there was at one point an external application called "WMP SpaceBar 1.0" that would front-end WMP and reenable this, but it's disappeared from the Internet near as I can tell.

Q: The font used by WMP7 (or newer) for the left options list has become corrupted after I installed (blank) - what font do I need to fix?

A: The "Microsoft Sans Serif" font ("sserife.fon" on Win9x, "micross.ttf" on NT, in the hidden "%windir%\fonts" directory) has become corrupted on your system. You'll need to reload or restore this font. [Also: Don't remove the Tahoma font. This is used by WMP for the Status Bar text.]
If you're still having font problems, the easiest way to diagnose which font is broken is, sadly, right-clicking on the Desktop, selecting Properties, and then selecting Appearance. On Windows XP you will need to click "Advanced" also. Then, click on the "Message Text" picture in the picture. Then change the "Font" option to be each of your fonts, one by one, until you see which font is corrupted.

Q: Why does the player keep positioning itself higher vertically each time I reopen it? It disappears off the screen at times...

A: You have a full screen-width menu bar at the top of the screen. This is a bug in the WMP7 layout code. For WMP7, move the menu bar elsewhere or resize it to less than full screen-width. This has been fixed in Media Player for XP and later releases.

Q: How do I use WMP6.4 instead of WMP7 (or newer) for (blank) file type?

A: Launch "mplayer2.exe" from the Start:Run menu. Go to WMP's View:Options:Formats menu dialog and reassociate the type(s) in question. (If you're fairly old school and want to run ActiveMovie, you can do this if amovie.ocx is on your system by running "rundll32 amovie.ocx,RunDll".)

Q: Where can I find the Windows Media Resource Kit?

A: It's on the general Windows Media Download site under the top drop-down list box, about the sixth option.
It's out of date, so has been removed from the general Microsoft download servers. If you still want/need it, you'll need to find at on a 3rd party site. Looking in Google.com or similar for "windows media resource kit" should help you find it.

Q: How do I make quick simple playlists for my web site?

A: I use either:
     dir /s /a:-d > my.playlist
or:
     dir /s /a:-d *.wma *.mp3 > my.playlist
and then use "Replace" with notepad/wordpad to replace "d:\my music" with the appropriate path.

A sample M3U playlist looks like this:

my.mp3 myother.mp3 while a sample ASX (or WAX or WVX) file looks like this: <ASX version="3.0"> <ENTRY><REF href="File1.mp3" /></ENTRY> <ENTRY><REF href="File2.wma" /></ENTRY> <ENTRY><REF href="File3.asf" /></ENTRY> </ASX> There's some helpful basic tips here, and full documentation here.

Q: Why won't my HTTP-based (web-based) ASX playlist expand when I right click on it?

A: This is a Feature, allowing content providers a little flexibility and pseudo-security. Use ".m3u" playlists if you find this annoying (and note that WMP supports ASF/WMA files from .m3u playlists...).

Q: Why does WMP say my ASX is invalid?

A: The ASX 3 syntax is XML-based, which means that when you open a tag: <repeat>, you must close it with </repeat> later in the ASX. WMP7 (or newer) will be okay with this error, but the WMP6 XML parser won't. In general, loading any problem ASXs into IExplore (rename them to ".xml" first) should show you where the problem lies.

Q: How do I specify an offset for playback to begin at within my ASF file?

A: Check out the WMPSDK - you want to use an ASX file, using StartTime and Duration, like so: <asx version="3.0"> <title>Playlist</title> <entry> <starttime value="00:00:35.0" /> <duration value="00:00:10.0" /> <ref href = "asf.asf"/> </entry> </asx>

Q: How do I make the player Better, More Usable?

A: For me, I did the following...

• turned "Start Player in Media Guide" off
• turned "When in compact mode, display anchor window" off
• turned "Enable Personal Rights Management" off
• increased Copy music quality to 160kbps
• turned the graphic equalizer and visualizations off
• turned CD Audio "Error Correction" on (I have a flaky CD-ROM drive)
• WM Player 9 Series: turned on folder watching for the My Music folder

Plus I wrote some skins, but that's because I have specific tastes. <grin>.

Q: Why won't WMP stop playback when I close it?

A: This means that either:

An application or service is still using WMP; or

A device driver will not shut down properly; or

A device is attached to the system and is using WMP still.
In the first case, you would want to check what else is running. In the second case, you would want to update your device drivers (video and audio card drivers are the most suspect).
In some cases you may need to open Windows Media Player again, press Stop, and then shut it down.

Q: I have a licensing question/redistribution question about...

A: This page is chockfull of info about Windows Media licensing policies. This page is the old starting point for licensing questions. If none of that answers your question, you'd want to send mail to wmla@microsoft.com with your question.

Q: How do I license WMP7 or WMP6?

A: Again, see this page for the answer.

Q: Why doesn't the Radio Tuner or Media Guide work for me? I just get a black screen...

A: This is usually because you would have turned off Active Scripting within IE's Tools:Options:Internet Options:Security Settings dialog. If you reenable this, the guide and tuner should work again. Also, supposedly Proximatron and AdSubtract will also break/block the Radio Tuner.
You may also want to check your Internet connection settings (and possibly check here as well, as well as verifying that you can directly access the Radio Tuner here.

Q: Why do I lose my Radio Station favorites sometimes?

A: Radio Station favorites are stored as Internet Explorer cookies. If you clear your cookie cache, the favorites will go away too.
If you're losing your Radio Station favorites, that definitely means that something is clearing your cookies out.

Q: Can I do frame by frame advance in Windows Media Player?

A: In WM Player 9 Series yes - go to WMP's View:Settings:Play Speed Settings and then use the little buttons in that frame to walk frames in the video.

If you're not using WM Player 9 Series: No. You can use "mplayer.exe" (on Win9x) or "mplay32.exe" (on WinNT) to do this for AVI and MPEG files, though. (Go to the Scale menu in that app and select "Frames".)

Q: When I go to a MIDI site, I can bring up the page with no trouble but when I click on a midi or wav file the Media Player doesn't open and I get the message that this page cannot be displayed. If I right click on the MIDI link and "save target as" to my desktop I can play it from there.

A: Go to WMP's Tools:Formats:Options. Uncheck "MIDI File", click apply, then check "MIDI file" and click Apply.

Q: How do I trouble-shoot MIDI?

A: I don't know. WMP has nothing to do with MIDI, we just take advantage of the system's support for it. Wise Tess says:
* Make sure your volume slider for "Midi" (and/or SW Synth) is up and not muted.
* Make sure "Midi Sequencer Device" is loaded in Control Panel, Sound and Audio Devices, Hardware, Media Controls Devices, Properties. (This is under Control Panel, Multimedia, Devices, Media Control Devices on old systems.) You can add it from Add New Hardware, Next, Next, No, Sound/Video/Games, Microsoft MCI. If it is loaded, go ahead and remove it and reinstall it.
Also, this may help some XP users having troubles with MIDI.

Q: I want to use WMP in my VC project...

A:Get the WMP SDK, which has the object model reference and other key information.

Q: I want to embed WMP in my Front Page web page...

A: Go here.

Q: How come I can't get the HTTP_REFERER in my server side script?

A: It's a browser architectural issue... that data is only available if you embed the player. This should be better addressed in v11, or via this v10 QFE

Q: How should I embed the v6 player in a web page?

A: Use the source from this page as a starting point. Refer to the WMPSDK with any questions. Note that once the v9 player is installed, that provides all further v6 embedding support.

Q: What about scripting the plug-in?

A: Per Jeff, the complete WMP object model is here, and the object model for WMP 6.4 is here.
This MSDN page is a the official reference point for the Netscape plug-in.The old WMP6 SDK will help more on the older WMP6 plug-in embedding.

Q: Why can't I embed the WMP6 Win32 plug-in within Netscape Navigator 6?

A: WM Player 9 Series adds a new plug-in that works with Netscape 6.
If you're not using WM Player 9 Series: Because Nav 6 is buggy and not backwards compatible with LiveConnect-supporting scriptable plug-ins, as documented here in the Netscape docs, and this Mozilla bug among a bunch of others.

Please note: WMP7.1 (latest release) includes an updated Netscape plug-in which works around some of their bugs. The plug-in will still not be scriptable, but it will be embeddable. Windows Media Player for Windows XP also includes this updated plug-in. Going to WMP's Tools:Options:Formats dialog and reselecting "Windows Media file" and clicking "Apply" will reinstall the plug-in to Netscape for you.

Also, REALLY note that Netscape 7.1 works hard to be compatible with WMP, so if you want to use WMP and Netscape together, use Netscape 7.1. :)

Q: Why does my file show up as text within the browser rather than be played by the player?

A: Your web server is misconfigured for the Windows Media MIME types. See the next question for how to fix this.

Q: Can I serve an ASF/WMA/WMV from my (fill-in-the-blank) web server?

A: Yes. You don't need any special server software, an HTTP server will do fine for non-MBR content. MultiBitRate content will work okay on an HTTP server too, just not nearly as well as if it was on a Windows Media Server. All the content provider has to do is set these MIME types:

Extension	MIME type
.asf .asx	video/x-ms-asf
.wma	audio/x-ms-wma
.wax	audio/x-ms-wax
.wmv	video/x-ms-wmv
.wvx	video/x-ms-wvx
.wm	video/x-ms-wm
.wmx	video/x-ms-wmx
.wmz	application/x-ms-wmz
.wmd	application/x-ms-wmd
.wpl	application/vnd.ms-wpl

and every user is good to go on that server. This web page has some helpful information on how to do this. This page has a description of the various file types, MIME types, and what should be in each file type. If the file is showing up as weird text or gibberish within the browser, or Saving As as an HTML or TXT file, then the MIME type is not set on the server, and you need to ask your web server administrator to fix this. =)

Q: When using Morpheus shared folders, I get errors trying to access those files...

A: According to Dan: go to Properties and click "Share this folder on the network".

Q: Why is seeking disabled / greyed out during ASF playback?

A: If you're playing back from a Windows Media Server, probably because the file was not indexed. Run the Windows Media File Editor (from the Windows Media Encoder package) on the file - use File:Save and Index there.
If you're playing back from a web server... because this isn't really supported.
If you're playing back locally... probably because you're using WMP6. Use the position slider to adjust your position.
(Note that some people refer to this as fast-forwarding or rewinding, even though that's not quite what it is.)
It is critical that the file is indexed, though, so make sure it is. Do this using a utility that ships with the Windows Media 9 Encoder called the "Windows Media File Editor". Just fire it up, and open your WMV file. File -> Save and Index, and the index should be applied. Note that almost all files produced with current tools are indexed by default - only older files or oddly produced files would need to have indexing set.

Q: Windows Media doesn't seem to be NetMeeting - how can I reduce latency?

A: It definitely is not NetMeeting and isn't really meant for perfectly live broadcasts. This article and this article address latency and how to reduce it.
Rob's additional Steps to Reduce Latency are:

1. On the server publishing point, go into the Properties tab and select Networking. Disable the buffering.
2. On the player, you can reduce the buffering time from the default. This setting is in Tools->Options->Performance->Network buffering for the 9 series player. Try setting this to a lower value.
3. On the encoder, make sure that your "preroll" setting (sometimes referred to as the "Buffer window") is set as low as you can. Regardless of how low you set the networking buffer in the player it will always buffer at least the "preroll" amount + 2 seconds (or the buffer setting, whichever is greater).

Per Rob, "Note that making these adjustments, while lowering the end to end latency can also greatly lower playback quality and performance."
In general, you will get the smallest latency using a completely Windows Media 9 Series solution, since the networking in 9 Series is optimized throughout the encoder, server, and player.
Research has a new Windows Media-based low latency conferencing solution here if you want to check that out.

Q: How do I do use a screen projecter with WMP?

A: If a normal video output doesn't work (produces only a black screen for WMP's video), go to WMP's Options and temporarily *completely* turn down video hardware acceleration. Project the video, and when done turn video hardware acceleration back up to normal.

If you're using the projected display as your secondary monitor, you may find better results by using the projected display as your primary monitor.

Q: How do I do a screen capture of a file playing in WMP?

A: If a normal alt-shift-printscreen doesn't work, go to WMP's Options and temporarily *completely* turn down video hardware acceleration. Take the screenshot, then turn video hardware acceleration back up to normal. (Note that in WMP9 and newer, you can use the View:DVD Features:Capture Image option to take a screenshot of the DVD (and a few other file formats) during playback.)
If this does not work, you will need to turn down hardware acceleration on your video card driver directly within your system's Display control panel.

Q: How do I substitute a different buffering animation within WMP6?

A: For the stand-alone player, you must customize the player with the WMP Custom Player Kit (CPK). For an embedded player, you must turn off AnimationAtStart, turn on TransparentAtStart, and in the background have a separate animation layered under the player.

Q: Why can't I use <a href="javascript:blah();"> to script the player?

A: Because IE treats this as a navigation event and sends us OLE_CMDIDSTOP, to which we are obliged to stop (so IE can quickly swap pages). If you don't like the behavior, yell at the IE team that this is wacky. I have. You can use: <a href="#" onclick="blah(); return false;"> , instead.

Q: How do I copy my vinyl records (LPs), cassettes, or mini-discs to WMA files?

A: The player cannot do this. The Windows Media Encoder has some basic ability to do this (via recording from line-in), but the Plus! Analog Recorder in the Plus! Digital Media Edition for Windows XP pack is actually designed for this purpose.

If you're not using Windows XP, MusicMatch is one of the many apps that can also do this.

Q: How do I convert (file type) to ASF?

A: Depends on what file type...
Windows Media Player 7+ will help you convert CD Audio to WMA (ASF).
Windows Media Encoder 7+ will convert AVI, WAV, MP3, MPEG1, and line-in to WMV (ASF).
Windows Media Encoder 3 and 4.x will convert AVI, WAV, MP3, and line-in to ASF.
Adobe Premiere 6 comes with an ASF plug-in, and there's a new v9 Adobe plug-in here .
Terran Media Cleaner will convert the file types they support to ASF. They have a Mac version too.
Sonic Foundry Stream Anywhere will convert the file types they support to ASF, I believe.
By selecting WinAMP's WMA output plug-in, I believe you can convert most of the file types that WinAMP supports to WMA.
dBpowerAMP Music Converter supposedly does: AIFF, MP3, MP2, RA, VOC, WAV, VQF, OGG, etc. to WMA (and vice versa) [My best friend strongly endorses this, and points out it has great Rio support].
RealOne's SuperPass premium supposedly lets you convert RealOne files to MP3 files and such.

If you want to convert PowerPoint slides to Windows Media presentations, the Power Point Producer Add-On is probably what you want.
There's a "Solution for Intranet Broadcast" that's also cool.

Serious Magic's Visual Communicator reportedly rocks for producing WMV video presentations.

There's lots of other apps, those are just the ones I remember offhand.

Q: What's the difference between ASF, WMV, and WMA?

A: There is no difference internally between ASF (Advanced Streaming Format), WMA (Windows Media Audio), and WMV (Windows Media Video). The reason for the difference is so that an application such as Winamp can take over the .wma extension and play audio and leave the .wmv extension for Windows Media Player which can render the video. .asf files can contain additional non-audio non-video data that may or may not be playable by a WMA or WMV capable player. If an app can handle ASF, it must be able to handle WMV and WMA. If an app can handle WMV, it should be able to handle WMA. An app that can handle WMA can likely only handle WMA.

To "convert" a .wmv to .asf, for example, just rename the file. A .wma file with video in it is invalid and would be rejected by a strict parser.

Q: How can I join / combine / concatenate two Windows Media (ASF, WMA, WMV) files?

A: Windows Movie Maker and Sound Forge 6.0 allow you to do this, and the "wmvappend" utility in the WM Format SDK also offers this functionality. Also, Peck's PowerJoin is now offering ASF joining. ASFTools should also work (also repairs ASFs, joins, cuts, and indexes them). (Another repair tool is this old ASF Video Repair tool, but I think generally the very old ASFTools is probably the better choice.)
Windows Movie Maker (in Windows Me and Windows XP) is also a really easy way to join clips - just File:Import the files you want to join, then toss them onto the timeline, and choose File:Save Movie. (You can validate any ASF files you think are corrupt using ASFView.)

Q: How can I join/combine two MPEG files?

A: See this page for info. Alessandro recommends TMPGEnc (Tsunami MPEG Encoder) for joining, so that might be the better choice. Supposedly anything OTHER than TMPGEnc will badly merge the files, leading to random skipping and invalid indexes (so time will display incorrectly). This is also good joining/editing reference.

Q: How do I rotate a video?

A: Obviously, the player can't do this. You have to do this on the tools side. Windows Movie Maker (Tools:Video Effects:Rotate video), VirtualDub, AVISynth, and BlazeMedia Pro are among other tools that will allow you to rotate videos.

Q: How do I index, shorten, trim, separate, split, or truncate my WMV/WMA/ASF files?

A: In Windows Media 9 Series, the "Windows Media File Editor" that's part of the Windows Media Encoder install will do this, TMK. Or you can losslessly join WMA/WMV/ASF files using WMVAppend, which is part of the Format SDK.
The Windows Media Resource Kit includes the Advanced Script Indexer (asi.exe), which will index them, or you can temporarily rename them to ".asf" so that the old ASF Indexer (asfchop.exe or asfindxr.exe) will recognize them.
ASFTools should also work (also repairs ASFs, joins, cuts, and indexes them).
You can also use Windows Movie Maker for this.

Q: How do I edit Script Commands in a file that was encoded as part of a live stream?

A: The Windows Media File Editor, an element of the Windows Media 9 Series Encoder, supports this.
There's an older article here, which will point you to the Advanced Script Indexer, which is part of the Windows Media Resource Kit, but the Resource Kit (and thus the ASI) are generally no longer available, at least from Microsoft.

Q: How do I turn off URL flip script commands in the evil file I'm trying to play?

A: Using Windows Media Player 9 Series, go to WMP's Tools:Options:Security dialog and uncheck "Run Script Commands When Present".
For older players, this should cover you. This fix contains this feature. Also, this support article addresses the issue in more depth. If you have any problems with turning these off (for example, if the patch doesn't work for you), contact product support as it says to on this page.

Q: How do you target a frame with an URL flip?

A: Use the form "http://URL&&FRAME".

Q: Windows Media Player 9 Series will not execute my relative URL flip script commands that I need for my presentation. What should I do?

A: Relative URL flips will be strictly rejected for security reasons. You will absolutely have to implement a browser-side event handler for the ScriptCommand event and handle the URL flips yourself.

Q: How do I edit my ASF file?

A: Use the Windows Movie Maker, which is part of Windows Me and Windows XP. Or Pinnacle 9 Video Editing Suite. Or you can do simple cut and paste style editing with ASFIndexer (or Advanced Script Indexer) and WMVAppend (these come in the Windows Media Resource Kit). Also VirtualDub 1.3x has limited ASF editing support (this was removed in later versions).

Q: Why does the encoder encode my content upside down/inverted/flipped?

A: I don't recall the specifics, but if you change the pixel format used during encoding this should go away. Per Al Darby, "In the session properties, select CHANGE for your file source and then set the pixel format to RGB24. All is well then." There's also a KB article here which may be helpful.

Q: Why does my content play upside down?

A: In some cases, the DivXG400 filter (used to work around a Matrox G440/G550 driver bug where they require output widths to be a multiple of 16) will invert playback of at least MPEG files - you may wish to uninstall that if you're getting inverted playback.

In some cases, go to WMP's Tools:Options menu dialog, go to Performance, Advanced, and uncheck use video mixing renderer (per Willboy).

If none of that is helpful, go here for more ideas.

Q: Why does the encoder say I need DirectX 6 when I already have DirectX 6 installed?

A: That's not what the error message says: it says you need DirectX *Media* 6 or later. This is distinct from DirectX 6. DirctX 8 installs DirectX Media 8 as well, so get that and you should be happy.

Q: Why should I use a media server instead of a web server?

A: There's a discussion on that issue here.

Q: How do I run IIS and Windows Media Server on the same box?

A: See the article here for Windows Media Server 4.x, and this page for Windows Media Server 9 Series.

Q: Why does the browser close when I click on a content file?

A: It's a bug in IE 5.5. Go get IE 5.5 SP1 for the fix.

-->Getting Further Help

Q: I can't find what I want on your page.

A: It has a lot of information. It is hard to search through, and the indexing is a little shoddy. What can be helpful is if you use your browser's Search ability to search this page for the keywords you're concerned about. That may not show up anything, but then again it might. Also: pay attention to what you're pointed to. Some people tend to gloss over the tips found here, which seems like they're wasting time visiting here in the first place. :)

If this FAQ does not have what you want... read on.

Q: Where do I find information about how to get actual support on WMP?

A: I do not track this area and cannot presume to speak upon it. The options I know about are the Microsoft support site, the Do It Yourself options, and then actual player support options. But my investigation here should be deemed amateur at best. You may find other/better support options - these are simply the ones I know about offhand.

One important thing to note is that product support helps let the product teams know what needs to be fixed - they have more say than someone like me does. So while alerting me to your problem seems productive, it's actually quite not. If you really care about the issue, take it to product support.

Q: I don't want to go through support for some reason.

A: Your other options are:

1. The actual Microsoft support site. Search for more information on your issue.
2. The "Contact MS" page.
3. Deja's UseNet archives (now known as Google Groups), where you can look for previous answers to your questions. This is hugely useful - don't underestimate or overlook this vital Internet resource.
4. Official WMP9 and WMP10 FAQ
5. WMP information (FAQ, troubleshooting, etc)
6. Win98 WMP FAQ
7. The WMPSDK on-line.
8. All official Windows Media FAQs.

Q: How do I submit my bug with any assurance that the reported bug will get before any decision maker in the Windows Media Player team?

A: Actual product support is your best option, as they would raise relevant bugs up the chain as needed according to their interpretation. Yours and my personal ideas of Important Bugs aren't definitive. The first "decision maker" in the process is that product support person at this time: if you don't get the feedback in before beta lockdown, then you don't have an ability to bypass product support channels any longer. "Releasing" software generally presumes that any bugs that are there are construed to be livable and therefore Probably Not Critical: that judgement override is done via product support channels. As far as you or any external party is concerned, what you have is all there is, and there are no further versions planned. That's a pretty standard setting of expectations: we all get spoiled in the Internet age. If you want to have an impact on product design, get involved in the beta stage if possible. I might not like Return of the Jedi, but it's not really possible for Lucas to go back and add more dance numbers without some large level of investment that takes away from some other project.

Q: I don't like this aspect of WMP Version Whatever...

A: Get in line - no one piece of software is ever perfect. :) It's certainly hard to make a perfect player (the good of MPC or WinAMP or WMP or VLC or iTunes comes with corresponding really annoying omissions/defects), and reams of experts in pertinent fields design what they think best. If you really feel your ideas are superior, you really should step off the sidelines: apply for a job at Microsoft, Apple, RealNetworks, or etc. If you're just idly unhappy... it all gets generally rereviewed each release, so you may get lucky. But if you really do have feedback: either take it to actual product support or get a job in the industry. That's meant lovingly: it's a wonderful challenge, and every failure is personal and painful, but ... it takes time to get everything right, and that's brutally hard in this rapidly changing industry. =(

Q: I'm looking for general information about how to use Windows Media...

A: The Inside Windows Media book may be generally helpful. The various SDKs help, MSDN has a a Windows Media section, there's a mailing list, there's a bunch of docs (with the products and available on the web), and this guy has another How to Use Windows Media book...

Q: Where can I make suggestions on how to improve Windows Media?

A: The wish list is here, or you can use this list of resources.

Q: How do I get help in the Microsoft newsgroups on my question?

A: Do not expect an answer - this is a peer-supported forum, not a Microsoft supported forum. It's important that you refer to the Rules of Conduct - the newsgroups are for peer support, not for receiving official MS support. If you really want customer support, you should call PSS. The details on calling support can be found here. Most users also typically will not respond to posts or e-mails that:

• ask a Frequently Asked Question (search DejaNews (now known as Google Groups) for possible answers to your problem first)
• do not contain a valid e-mail address (spam-trapped is okay)
• are posted to irrelevant newsgroups (questions about the player in the server newsgroup are a good way to get ignored)
• are cross-posted heavily (1-2 newgroups is usually all you should post to many people ignore anything cross-posted to 3+ groups even if it was a valid cross-post)
• are velveeta-ed across multiple newsgroups (crosspost: don't keep posting again and again in different newsgroups - many people ignore items that are posted individually to multiple newsgroups)
• are addressed to a specific user (it's a community forum, and there are plenty of other people who can help out. Posts addressed to specific users mean that the forum is becoming unfairly dominated by certain members.)
• are posted multiple times to the same newsgroup within a week - that's a good way to get killfiled

You will want to:

• SUPPLY A USEFUL CONTEXT. It's such a waste of time to say "This bad things happen. How to fix?" Explain what's going on on your system. This should also help you provide good info.
• Form complete sentences and describe the problem meaningfully. If you don't care enough about the problem to explain yourself well, most people won't care enough to bother to help. :\
• Be calm. Yeah, anything sucks when its wrong, but it is not personal, it is not part of some Government Master Plan or other paranoid conspiracy, and the people who write the software work their butts off to write great software. If somehow it doesn't work on your system, the people who created the software are usually as pissed off (or more so) than you, so don't harsh on them.

Also, Sean Alexander wrote a good post on how to provide Good Technical Information in your posts.

If you need help understanding Internet acronyms and slang, this should help.

Q: How do I ask questions in way that helps people provide me with the information I need?

A: Often - and I'm as guilty of this as anyone - people don't provide enough information for others to help them. It's the same thing as if you were going to a doctor: you need to help others help you. And since the people helping you here are doing so voluntary in their free time, you really need to help them help you. For example, if even I'm pointing you here, that means that you should really look at this list and provide answers, as based upon what is known so far there's not enough information to provide help to you yet. Here's some critical basic information that you should provide in your descriptions:

1. Does the file mmswitch.ax exist on your system? If you do, that's your problem. That's a horrible file and gets installed by horrible codec packs assembled by pretty stupid people that you shouldn't trust with your system.
2. What operating system are you using?
3. What exact version of Windows Media Player are you using? [Only WMP's Help:About menu will provide this exact information.]
4. What type of issue are you having? A bug, a feature request, or something else?
5. Does this happen in other players? Which ones? [Different players access the same parts of the system different ways, so a particular bug may be isolated to a specific interface of a piece of the system, as opposed to that player.] You will want to try different players in most cases so that you can help people understand the scope of the problem that you're facing.
6. Does it happen in/with both "mplayer2.exe" and "wmplayer.exe", if applicable? This is a critical question. "mplayer2.exe" (WMP6) is already on your system in the C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player directory.
7. Does this happen for files saved locally, files played back from the Internet, or both?
8. Does this happen only if the file has video, or does it happen for all files?
9. What type of file are you trying to play? Is it an MPEG, ASF, AVI, MIDI, WAV, or what?
10. Does this happen for all files of that type, or just certain ones? There's a sample page here if you need to see what files you can successfully still play.
11. What are the steps that you follow in order to produce the error?
12. What are you doing when you get the error?
13. How could someone else cause the error to happen their computer?
14. If the problem occurs with content on the Internet, what URL do you use to encounter the problem?
15. What video card do you have?
16. What sound card do you have?
17. Does this same error occur on any other computer?
18. If this is a networking problem, what is your networking configuration? (And note this addresses most networking issues.)
19. If there's an error code, what is it? What exactly does the error text say? Most critically, what is the error code number if present?
20. If you hit a crash and get the opportunity to send an error report, do so! Then:
    On Vista: open the Start menu. Click All Programs. Select "Maintenance". Select "Problems Reports and Solutions". Click "View Problem History". Look for the crash/error in question. Double-click the report in question. What is that data? (You can use "Copy to Clipboard" to easily include this data in your message.)
    On XP and earlier: go to the Event Viewer in Administrative Tools (you can manually run this with the commandline "%windir%\system32\mmc.exe" "%windir%\SYSTEM32\eventvwr.msc" /s' if you need to). Go to the Application log in Event Viewer. Look for the "Error" in that list - there should be two for your latest crash. The most recent one should have a "Fault bucket" number. What is that number? (If these steps are confusing to you, Step #6 here is another/easier write-up.) There will be another Error Event in that list that will have the Faulting Application - all of that information is *also* helpful. Please note that if you do not have a Crash Bucket number (which you can only get by sending up the crash report), it will be much harder to assess your issue. HungApp crash buckets are also generally useless. (A developer might find WinDbG helpful to debug this crash, but that requires pretty high skill. DebugDiag may be easier for the average user.)
21. If you hit a blue screen, that's not good. This page can help you figure out more information about that blue screen. Typically this is only going to come from driver issues or other significant problems.
22. What WMP6 version does this page detect?
23. What WMP7+ version does this page detect?

Note that supplying this information *in full* (if you half-ass it, you're NOT helping) is not a guaranteed way to get help in the newsgroups - it only helps your chances. If you're having some weird issue that you can't figure out and you have *access* to the computer, realize that it is that much harder for someone who does *not* have access to your system to help out. If you're not getting help in the newsgroups, you'd pretty much have to take your problem to actual product support.

Q: What are the most common causes of crashes in WMP?

A: Surprisingly, bad third party code. WMP allows third parties to plug in, and not all play well/healthily. If you have "mmswitch.ax" or "neroburnplugin.dll" on your system, you should remove those- those don't work with WMP. If you have "ffdshow.ax", "divxdec.ax", "xvidcore.dll", "igdumd32.dll", or "sockspy.dll" (BitDefender Anti-Virus) on your system, you should make sure you have the latest versions of those, as earlier versions may causes crashes. These files alone account for most crashing problems with WMP.

Q: Can you give me the e-mail address of someone who can help me with (blank)?

A: Sorry, this is not possible.

Q: I found a bug. What do I do?

A: Take it to Product Support. That's really about the best and perhaps only effective(?) conduit I know of for handling bugs. Sorry: there's big scale issues here that come into play. Remember that your bug would get mixed in with another's persons confusion and so forth.

Q: Hey, who are you?

A: I've been a developer on the Windows Media team for the past ten years (started full-time back in August 96). I think the product rocks, so I like to a: help people have an easier time in a very complex field, and b: learn what we can work on to make the product better.
I've lately decided that the newsgroups are pretty acerbic at times, and decided to walk away so that those involved can better formulate a constructive and positive user experience. Obviously this is UseNet, so that's of course not possible, but I will hope. But as far as I'm concerned: it's just mental stress and a time-suck (basically, what I've been doing for the past ten years is technical charity work) -- and so for now it's time to walk away.

Q: What's your e-mail address?

A: For support questions, click here.
Please do not ever e-mail me questions on Windows Media: I will not respond to them, nor will I be able to provide you further resources. I have NO time to help you with, so please don't make me feel bad about trying to be a nice guy by asking for yet more out of me.

Supporting Windows Media is not my life. It's not even my job: my job is to write code, and it's some other team's job to do support. As any friend of mine can tell you, I am extremely busy. I am hard pressed to do everything I try to do at work as it is, and I'm certainly woefully behind in my personal life. People asking for more out of me are asking me to sacrifice my life to them, and that just sucks. Don't do that. Don't be that guy.

For issues or concerns with Microsoft, you'll want to consult PSS or other official support channels. I will not point you to further resources: other people have their own jobs. When I get e-mail help requests from people, it's really saddening: I can only do so much. Please don't make me feel bad that I'm not sacrificing more of myself and my life. :\

For what it's worth, Microsoft employees can not speak to product releases, marketing, licensing, legal issues, strategy, competitive issues, future product features, nor whether or not something will get fixed, so don't ask.

Q: I'd like to link to your page but not include your site's Table of Contents.

A: I have no problem with anyone linking to my site, and in fact would encourage this. If you don't want to show the site TOC - which at this point is turned off - , add "?noshowtoc" to the URL - as in http://zachd.com/pss/pss.html?noshowtoc. The global script my site uses recognizes that and turns the TOC off. Please do not excerpt from this FAQ without really making sure you want to do so: I update the data here regularly, which is why linking to the FAQ may be your best option. Almost all common problems have Name shortcuts so you can index into the FAQ easily (view the source to see these).

Other useful links:

• How to ask smart questions (Don't ask these people for support)
• XPSP2 Support tools. Every geek has to love this kind of thing.
• Microsoft "request for existing hotfix" form
• WMP Plug-in for Firefox (and here's the old article on How to embed and use WMP in Firefox) (also: WMP in Firefox Knowledge Base)
• The differences in DRM between XP and Vista.
• A Visual History of Windows Media Player. Nice site.
• Remoting Windows Media Player in C# sample
• Papa John's Movie Maker 2 site. A really useful site.
• Windows Media Knowledge Center!. Meant to be one-stop shopping for WM questions. :)
• Make your iPod work within WMP. Or use XPlay or AnaPod, which makes iPod more Windows-friendly.
• Windows Media compatible portable devices.
• Licensing Windows Media 9 Series.
• Encoding HDTV to WMV9
• Windows Media site on MSDN.
• WMPSDK on-line.
• Deja's UseNet archives (now known as Google Groups). Look for previous answers to your questions.
• The Microsoft version of this page.
• The MS support site.
• WMP information (FAQ, troubleshooting, etc)
• Win98 WMP FAQ
• Information on using SAMI (closed captions) (also here).
• The WMTalk mailing list archives.
• MS MVP web site. Various useful tips.
• John McGowan's AVI Overview.
• DirectX FAQ.
• Streaming Media Review. So old it hurts, but still an interesting in-depth look at the industry as it stood in 1997.
• WMA Encoder/Decoder. One of various WMA encoder/decoders. Remember: switching out from using lossy compression causes a loss of sound quality. Same problem going to/from MP3.
• JWZ's analysis of webcasting legalities.
• CD-Recordable FAQ.
• Net Video Trends. A 2003 write-up of the industry.
• iPaq Automobile MP3/WMA Jukebox how-to. Looks like it could be a fun project.
• More peeks at Corona.
• CD Text Manager to extract CD-Text...
• Using WMP with Opera
• Using WMP in MSN Spaces.
• Adding your station to the Radio Tuner