Windows Media Player keeps crashing, what do I do?

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Uninstalling and reinstalling often solves these kind of problems. You will want to make sure you do it thoroughly.
Question:

I have Windows XP. My Media Player shows my songs, but there is no sound.
I’ve reinstalled, but no change. It gives me this error msg COOD11B1. When I
move the file to the playlist, there is a big red x on the right corner and a
white x inside a small red circle next to the song. It gives me a msg, “Windows
Media Player stopped encountered a problem while playing the file. For
assistance, click Web Help.” I have but I really don’t know anything about
drivers. I clicked on the ones that say Audio and they indicate they are working
properly. I have ITunes and that works, I can hear sound on my websites; it is
just that Media Player. Should I just uninstall it and look for some free stuff
to replace it? Will it affect my Audacity software (by the way, that too has no
sound), but I think it has something to do w/the Media Player, but hey what do I
know.

In this excerpt from
Answercast #26, I look at a case where Windows Media Player is having
problems. There are ways to try to fix it, but maybe a new player is a better
idea.

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Windows Media Player without sound

So, you’ve got an interesting combination of problems here.

The fact that iTunes works is wonderful data because what it tells me is this is very likely not a driver-related issue. Your computer can in fact produce sound.

In the case of Media Player, since it is actually crashing on you, what I would do first is I would uninstall it completely. In fact, I would use Revo Uninstaller to uninstall it and all traces of it.

Then try reinstalling it to see if that causes things to begin working again.

Free media player

If that does not, I would be tempted to uninstall it and install a different media player like perhaps VLC.

VLC is the media player that I run most often. In fact, I think it’s been months since I fired up Windows Media Player. And even then, that’s only been to help diagnose somebody’s problem.

So VLC might be an alternative that should work for you.

Audacity

The Audacity problem is an interesting one as well. Audacity should be completely unrelated to what’s going with Windows Media Player and in fact, I would probably recommend the exact same steps.

Once you have a working media player (be it either Windows Media Player or something like VLC), I would uninstall Audacity completely. Again, perhaps using Revo Uninstaller.

Reinstall it clean from scratch. That, I hope, would take care of any problems that it was having.

Next from Answercast 26 – Why are pictures on my laptop only showing if the original SD card they came from is inserted?

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1 thought on “Windows Media Player keeps crashing, what do I do?”

  1. WMP died on me several months ago, and I took your advice, installing VLC. I’d have loved to reinstall WMP (since having a dead app on my notebook is worthless), but the only place to find it is on the original Windows disk – it’s not available at microsoft.com for whatever reason.

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