All of a sudden, Windows Media Player refuses to open for me. When I click on a shortcut or the executable file itself, all my computer does is give me a sound as if a popup window is blocked.
I haven’t made any changes to my computer recently. What should be my first course of action (other than buying an Apple) to remedy this problem?
Thanks much for your advice!
This may seem like an odd question, but are you sure it isn’t already running?
I’ve has this problem before. I close the player, but find when I pull up the Task Manager, I see it is still “running”. I End Program the process and everything is fine afterwards.
Just a thought.
I’ve had what Mr. Blue Sky describes happen to me. Certain files screw up the player and it won’t close correctly. Rebooting should also fix the problem in this case.
After reading your responses, I checked the system tray, and Media Player does not appear to be running. If I try to play any MP3 file, nothing happens, which causes me to believe Media Player is not associated with those files, or if it is, it’s just not working.
Any other ideas? Any more ideas are greatly appreciated!
Press Control-Shift-Esc. Click on the Processes tab. See if there is an entry for “wmplayer.exe”. If there is, select it, and hit the “End Process” button. Say OK to the scary warning that comes up. If there are more “wmplayer.exe” entries, end them too. Once they are all gone, try and play the media file again.
It would be helpful if you said which version of Windows and which version of Media Player you run. Does rebooting solve the problem? To bring up the Task Manager in Win98 do “Ctrl-Alt-Delete” in XP you can simply right click the Task Bar and select Task Manager from the popup menu. If you have a failed instance of Media Player going, it won’t show in the system tray.
To check your file associations, open Windows Explorer and go to the menu for Tools -> Folder Options -> File Types.
Right click on any .mp3 file and choose to “Open with”. Choose windows Media player.
Does it work?
Can you go to start…then programs…then windows media player…and just open the program?
If none of the previous options works (that is, rebooting doesn’t fix the problem and you can’t even open Media Player), you can try reinstalling it.
The current release version is Windows Media 9. 10 is in beta, and if you’re having problems with a previous install, I wouldn’t recommend trying a beta in an attempt to fix the problem…
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/technologies.aspx