1. Remove Windows Media Player

It is not hard to get problems in Windows Media Player. There are several reasons for it, such as installing third party Media Players, DVD Players on your Windows 7 PC, that associate the file associations, install their own codec etc.Most of these third party media players try to associate media files to themselves, and finally you end up with messed file associations for playing the audio and video files. Moreover, the damage is extensive when codecs get messed up, often making playing videos with no audio, and in worst scenarios no video too!

Remove Windows Media Player

The best solution? Repair WMP 12.Uninstall Windows Media Player 12Note that uninstalling Windows Media Player 12 also disables Windows Media Center, as it uses WMP12 for its operation.1. Click “Start” button, type “windows features” in the program search box and hit enter.2. In the “Windows Features” dialog box, look for “Media Features” and expand it.3. Clear “Windows Media Player” check box.4. As soon as you clear the check box, you will see a pop-up saying that “The following Windows features will also be turned off because they are dependent on Windows Media Player.” The listed program is “Windows Media Center”.Go ahead and click “Yes”.Windows will now begin uninstalling WMP12.

I am looking to disable automatic upgrades in Windows Media Player 12 in our companies' Windows 7 build. We would prefer to control when our machines get upgrades. So far I have not found the correct registry value.

You have to restart Windows.Reinstall Windows Media Player 12 and Windows Media CenterFollow step 1 and 2 from same as above.3. Check boxes “Windows Media Player” and “Windows Media Center”.4. Click “OK”.Windows will take some time in reinstalling them. Wait for the process to finish.Fix Windows Media Player Problems with Microsoft Fixit tool. This is a portable tool that can be run offline.

Run the downloaded executable, make sure to run as administrator. Follow on-screen instructions. You can make a new folder in C drive named “Microsoft Fixit”, to save the tool. Click “Save” button.The tool will download and save the portable tool of around 40MB in size in the specified folder. After download is complete, click on “Finish” button. Open the folder where you saved the file, it should be named “Launch Fix it”.From the list of fixes, click on the “Run Now” button against “Fix Windows Media Player video, and other media or library issues”.Follow the on-screen instructions to get the WMP fixed.

If you use VLC media player as a default player to play music an videos then you can disable Windows media player in Windows 7 by using its Turn Windows features on or off. To disable it click on the start button and type turn windows features in the search box. Click Enter.Windows features window will open. Expand the Media Features and uncheck the box next to “Windows media player”.A small window will pop up telling you that Windows media center will also be turned off because it is dependent upon Windows media player and can’t work without it. Click Yes if you want to disable both the features.Wait for some time so that Windows can disable the Windows Media player and Windows media center.Click on “Restart Now” to restart your PC to apply the changes. You can restart it later of you are performing some important task.To restart it later, click on “Restart Later” button.That’s it.

Similarly you can disable other features too. You can disable Internet explorer, Games, Windows search and other features. If you find the better alternative of the programs then it is better to disable them. We’ll discuss disabling other features in future.