My wife has Windows Media Player 9 on her computer. It keeps trying to open even though it is not being used and there is no CD in the CD-Rom drive. How can we disable it so we can use Music Match Jukebox as our preferred player?

Hi James, You mean: you doubleclick on a music- or moviefile in Explorer, and WMP opens it, but you want MM Jukebox to play it instead? The way Windows handles this, is by file-association (aka file-type). For each registered file-type, there is an "open with" program associated with it. You can find the full list of filetype-associations in: Control Panel>Folder Options>View menu Select the filetype(=>file-extensions) in the list, and change the "open with" program for it. Some mediaplayers have an option to keep themselves associated with certain filetypes, though. And WMP has that too, so you need to turn that off first: WMP>Tools menu>Options>File-Types page: UNcheck the items you want to MM Jukebox to handle. Apply the changes. Now you can change the "open with" program in the Folder Options to the MM Jukebox program without WMP resetting it. MM Jukebox may even have its own options for keeping itself associated with particular types of files, but I don't use MM, so I don't know for sure. Note: An alternative way of setting the file-type "open with" program, is by rightclicking the file [you want MM to open] in Explorer, and selecting "open with" from the menu, then "Choose Program", and then point it at the MM program (and check the "always use selected program..." checkbox). ___________________________________________ ☺ [Belgium, GMT+1]_________________________svg

SVG, thanks for the reply and the information. Our real problem is that Windows Media Player (WMP) just opens on its own at random. It is diffucult to close as it keeps reopening at random and even though we close it (x out) it will pop open again in a few seconds. We would like to disable it completely or remove it completely, but we understand it cannot be removed. Any ideas? James E.

WMP 9 randomly starts on its own? That's really weird behaviour! Does this happen when the computer is offline too? ▫ 1 Rightclick on all the CD/DVD Drives in Explorer and check their properties for an AutoPlay tab. As you pointed out, AutoPlay seems the most likely source for this. ▫ 2 Start TaskManager (press CTRL+SHIFT+ESC) and keep it open on the "processes" page. Rightclick on all "wmplayer.exe" processes and select "end process". That way, you know for sure that WMP is stopped. This may be a case of one wmplayer closing with an error and keeping itself in memory the whole time. Check for any running wmplayer.exe processes when XP starts up. ▫ 3 Is it trying to open a document when it starts? Could be an HTML-embedded player, so does WMP start after you've opened Outlook (e-mail with HTML page + embedded WMP Player), or Internet Explorer (Startpage with embedded player) or some other program that uses HTML pages. There would be a delay when this embedded player opens, so it could appear random after a while. ▫ 4 WMP>Tools menu>Options>Privacy page: Press both the "Clear History" and "Clear CD/DVD" button. ControlPanel>Internet Options>General page: Clear the cookies and the Temporary Internet Files. ▫ 5 Any error-messages? http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/9series/player/playererrors.aspx ▫ 6 Some adware or virus that's playing tricks? ▫ [on-line] BitDefender Anti-Virus ▫ [on-line] RAV Anti-Virus (AV Security) ▫ [on-line] ActiveScan Anti-Virus (Panda) ▫ [on-line] HouseCall Anti-Virus (Trend Micro) ▫ nod32 Anti-Virus (eset) ▫ Avast! Anti-Virus (Avast) ▫ F-Prot Anti-Virus (F-Secure) ▫ AVG Anti-Virus (Grisoft) ▫ Spybot Search & Destroy (Safer Networking) ▫ Ad-aware (Lavasoft) ▫ [blocker] SpywareBlaster (Javacoolsoftware) ▫ [on-line] TrojanScan (GFi) ▫ TDS-3 (DiamondCS) ▫ Pest Patrol ▫ CWShredder (Merijn.org) Keep in mind that some of them may need to be updated over the web first when started, and before zapping the baddies! One Anti-Virus scan + Spybot and Adaware scans (update them all first) to be sure. ▫ 7 Have you checked the Windows Update page for WMP-specific critical update patches you should install? ▫ 8 WMP 10 has a beta version out, and the full version may be out soon, so that could be a solution in the future. You're right: you can't uninstall WMP9 on XP. Microsoft made SystemRestore the way to uninstall it, but that's no good because you will lose all WindowsUpdates you did since the WMP install date. There are a couple of tricks you can try though, for making WMP not start on its own: - rename the wmplayer.exe file, so that whatever is starting it, doesn't find it and then complains about that - so you find out what's behind this. But: the system could create a 'manifest' file instead. - change the permissions on the wmplayer.exe file, so that the UserAccount on which it happens (or does it happen on each account?), doesn't have permission to start the wmplayer.exe file. Let me know if you want to try this - try the above first. ___________________________________________ ☺ [Belgium, GMT+1]_________________________svg

svg, thanks again for following this thread and posting a thoughtful reply. I will try your suggestions and post back here when I have had an opportunity to follow each step. In answer to the first question, Does it do it offline? The answer is yes. James E.

svg, number 4 of your suggestions did the trick. Thank you very much. James E.

Good to see you got it working again, James! ___________________________________________ ☺ [Belgium, GMT+1]_________________________svg