WMP 12 is really stupid and annoying.

I'v dual-booted XP/win7(32bit ver.7100) on my HP laptop and I like it so far except for the stupid new media player.

So far WMP has managed to butcher my mp3 collection by deleting of the last few seconds off several of my songs.

It was unable to play a certain mp3 file but when I booted in XP and used WMP 11 the mp3 file was able to play PERFECTLY.

The same thing happened with a video, I downloaded an TV show (avi) off the internet WMP 12 plays it for for 18 min. before throwing up an error message, and whenI booted into XP and WMP 11 was able to play THE ENTIRE avi file PERFECTLY.

I recently upgraded to the newest rc build (7264) and all these problems still persist.

I finally got fed up with WMP 12 and decided to disable it using the 'turn windows features on and off' option, I disabled WMP and windows media center turned off laptop, rebooted and got a message saying there was an error and my changes were being reverted.

My point is: How could Microsoft mess up so badly on WMP 12 when WMP 11 works so well, it seems that they have taken a HUGE step backwards, to me WMP 12 acts like WMP 11 in it's alpha development cycle.

I know there's a fix around that would downgrade wmp12 to 11, but it seems the server that fix is on is inaccessible.

Has anyone else had this sort of problem, and does anyone know how to fix this mess?

Control Panel > Programs > Turn Windows features on or off (top left pane)

Deselect the box. Ok.

Install JetAudio.

I tried that but after I restart my laptop I at the welcome screen I get a message telling me that my configuration failed and windows is reversing changes made to the system, then my laptop starts and nothings changed.

I tried to get rid of WMP 11 at work because every time it starts my computer becomes unresponsive. It's not easy on XP but Se7en should let you do it. You may have to uninstall and turn it off there like the Capt said.

sirsiddius, I respect your opinion that WMP12 is 'stupid' but keep in mind that, Windows 7 itself has not reached RTM yet, meaning there will/can still be bugs with anything in the OS.

WMP12 may take a bit to be fixed but I personally like it as it has all the codecs I need built-in.

I'll be perfectly honest, I have no issue with WMP12 at all. I've found it soo much better than any other itteation of WMP that I think Microsoft has finally got it right

The only issue i've ever had was 7048 with MP3 corruption and that was fixed in 7057 upwards

My problem may be isolated. The MP3 corruption thing has probably been fixed ever since I moved to 7264. But the issues of not playing mp3s and AVIs that WMP and any other media player could handle is irritating. I would understand if MS was trying to implement some new feature in WMP12 and it comes out half-baked and buggy, but playing mp3's and avi's is not exactly anything new.

Also has anyone actually tried the disable windows media player and windows media center options from the screenshot that Captain Zero posted. When I tried it I would get an error message upon reboot.

Ultimately guess I'm not that upset with the brokeness of WMP12 but rather with the inability to remove a that semi-broken piece of software.

sirsiddius said:

My problem may be isolated. The MP3 corruption thing has probably been fixed ever since I moved to 7264. But the issues of not playing mp3s and AVIs that WMP and any other media player could handle is irritating. I would understand if MS was trying to implement some new feature in WMP12 and it comes out half-baked and buggy, but playing mp3's and avi's is not exactly anything new.

Also has anyone actually tried the disable windows media player and windows media center options from the screenshot that Captain Zero posted. When I tried it I would get an error message upon reboot.

Ultimately guess I'm not that upset with the brokeness of WMP12 but rather with the inability to remove a that semi-broken piece of software.

Click to expand...

Adding new things can easily cause other things to not work as intend.

Personally I have to agree with sirsiddius. I think WMP12 as it is now as awful. But I also agree it is not a finished product. Whilst I've not had any MP3 corruption I have rebuilt my library in several ways including a manual rip out and delete and WMP12 still can't add all my MP3s and the background library updater runs for an hour, says it's complete then runs again and just loops like this indefinitely. I am just hoping that MS fix the numerous library issues by RTM.

I've ordered two copies of Win7, one for my main PC and one for my Living room media player.

If in RTM WMP12 is still unable to maintain the library properly I'll stick to Winamp on my main PC, but I won't be able to install it on the media PC as I use Media Center.

I just hope MS monitor the various forums like this one and can see the extraordinary number of people posting with WMP12 issues (especially around library corruption) otherwise they will have a lot of unhappy customers to deal with.

This is a fairly old topic, but it looks like sirsiddius didn't download the packet that was to protect corruption of MP3's. That packet was in the beta version, not RC 7100.