Windows Media Player Not Working

[gdewar]

My WMP has just quit working. After following all the various instructions on Google, and finding out that M'soft wants $59 to help me, I'm at the end of my rope. I have Win 7, 64 bit on a 9 month old machine. I click on the wmp.exe file and nothing happens. I try to open a .wmv file and I get a message "Server execution failed". Any ideas?

[Nimiq USA]

should you have the OS disc with you, just erase c: drive and reinstall windows again. It's good habit to clean & reload windows from scratch as once recommended by LEO LAPORTE on G4TV...

[Nimiq USA]

Windows Media Player 12 Crashes Virtually Everytime

"Almost everytime I open Windows Media Player 12 it crashes. Usually the Window opens but is greyed out and the cursor indicates that it is busy."

<Method 1.
1. Click on Start and in the search bar type cmd.exe
2. Right click on cmd.exe and click on Run as Administrator
3. In the command prompt type the following command

net localgroup "Administrators" "NT Authority\Local Service" /add 4. Press enter and restart the computer


Method 2.
Uninstalling and Reinstalling the Windows Media Player:
Step 1.
Uninstalling the Windows Media Player:
1. Go to Start and in the search type "Turn Windows features On or Off".
2. Click on "Turn Windows features On or Off".
3. Browse to the Media Features and uncheck the mark in front of Windows Media Player.
4. Restart the computer

Step 2.
Reinstalling the Windows Media Player:
1. Go to Start and in the search type "Turn Windows features On or Off".
2. Click on "Turn Windows features On or Off".
3. Browse to the Media Features and place a check mark in front of Windows Media Player.
4. Restart the Computer.

Method 2 fixes the problem. However, it has gotten to the point that WMP 12 is unusable as it crashes almost everytime and I'm not prepared to have to restart my PC twice in order to view a video or listen to some music.>

[gdewar]

If I have to reinstall Windows and then reinstall all my programs it's not worth the trouble. The reason I wanted to get WMP up again was to view the traffic cams on our local City website. However that is the ONLY reason I use it, so it wouldn't be a tragedy if it never worked again on this machine (I have 2 others). BTW, I did the turn off/turn on trick and it failed to work. Can't understand how it happened in the first place - it was right out of the blue. Thanks for your help! Any other solutions?

[DSgamby]

You are not reinstalling Windows. Just the Media Player as stated in post #3.

[Danster]

I had a problem like that before but it was due to a bad codec install. I uninstalled the codec pack, rebooted and reinstalled it. WMP worked again.

Have you installed something like it lately? How about a simple system restore to the day where it still was working?

[gdewar]

System restore worked! Thank you Danster! Now you can change your profile to read 465,122 people in Lincoln who aren't as helpful as Danster! Have a great weekend. Also, thanks to those of you who jumped in to help.

[Danster]

No problem. In all my years of using Windows, a system restore is always the first thing to look at. As to why WMP quits to work for no reason, a misplaced electron that farted along the way might have triggered it.. It is after all Windows.