How-To Geek
How to Reinstall Windows Media Player in Windows 7 to Solve Problems
If you’re having problems with media playback on your Windows 7 PC using Windows Media Player, or even using other applications like Media Monkey, you might need to reinstall Windows Media Player. But how?
Reader Ted wrote in with this tip, which solved his problem of playing ripped music files in either Windows Media Player or Media Monkey.
Step 1: Uninstall Windows Media Player
Open up Control Panel and type “windows features” into the search box, and then click on Turn Windows features on or off.
Go down to Media Features –> Windows Media Player
Step 2: Reboot
That is all.
Step 3: Turn Windows Media Player Back On
Head back into Windows Features on or off, and check the box again.
At this point hopefully your problem should be solved.
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Comments (7)
Programmer by day, geek by night, The Geek, also known as Lowell Heddings, spends all his free time bringing you fresh geekery on a daily basis. You can follow him on Google+ if you'd like.
- Published 08/19/10
yeah that’s cool and all but my WIndows Features is BLANK so How do I fix it >.<
works great, though already knew this, but my problem still persists, a few minutes after i do the above the problem comes back.. cannot play normal mp3, or wma.
the funny thing is, that i recently installed a explorer external program named “xplorer2″, and from there even though i still have the same problem, they have a preview option, and a second option to open with the native program, and it opens and plays without a problem.
any ideas would be appreciated.
doctor:
put a check in the box, wait, and you will get a window asking to reboot, hope it helps your problem.
It didn’t fix my problem.
Whenever I try to run windows media player, i get a big error.
it says “Windows Media Player is not installed properly and must be reinstalled.
Do you want to install the Player from the Microsoft Web site?” *yes/no buttons*
Upon clicking yes it brings me to
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/download/download.aspx
which tells me
“There is no download available for this operating system. Please visit Windows Update to check for the latest Windows Media Player updates.”
uhh, yea microsoft. Definitely using windows 7 professional.
Any hints would be awesome.
tapuz:
check your codec settings, thats what it sounds like. Windows media player sucks at remembering codecs, there’s some websites that have “codec fixers.” I did that on my vista using some russian one.
any other player works for me, so i assume the codecs are fine.
unless i’m missing something here.
For a while now, Windows Media Player stopped opening songs, as it was the default program for music. It only works if I click on run as administrator, but not when I click a music file.
I have turned the program off and on several times to no avail.
My last resort was to use other players, but I liked WMP as it used DFX Audio Enhancement plug in.
Roxy
worked like charm. thank you. i had wasted several hours fighting the box before you rescued me. bravo.