Windows update seems to have broken DRM (Media Player)

[ratkil]

A week or so ago I got a Windows update overnight and a few days later noticed my Zune subscription wasn't recognizing DRM rights and wouldn't play music. Since Zune uses Media Player DRM I tried playing the music in Media Player and got the following error:

Windows Media Player is not installed properly. Reinstall the Player

I then spent several hours reinstalling and attempting to fix the DRM all to no avail. Finally I reloaded the entire computer. Everything seemed fine for several days, than last night a set of updates installed and now I have the same problem again.

The interesting thing is that I can't find any mention of this online or on here (granted my forum search capabilities not great).

I can't believe this would only affect me, and with a relatively stock load right now I have hard time believing it's an incompatibility.

Anyone have any thoughts? I am not reloading again, I will just install Zune in virtual machine and remove Media Player at this point if not, I don't use it for anything else anyway.

edit: I did try sfc scannow command also per suggestions on media player problems

Thanks in advance for any help.
Delos

 

[ratkil]

Took 4 tries but Windows Repair seems to have fixed the issue.

 

[PeachBanana]

Took 4 tries but Windows Repair seems to have fixed the issue.

I'm having this problem as well after updating yesterday, googled and only this thread came up related to my problem.

Can you walk with me the steps to recover this problem? none of my media files with DRM will play at all now, i'm getting pretty pissed off.

 

[ratkil]

Well I may have spoken too soon. I woke up this morning to 175 update which right now it's in 169 of 175 so will see if it's broken again when done.

I ran setup off windows install disk from within windows then selected upgrade which does a repair. I naively assumed when it said download updates as part of repair that it would install all updates during process. Evidently by updates it meant the weekend football scores or something. Let me know if you want more detail in steps for this.

Anyway if it ever finishes will post if problem is back.

 

[ratkil]

Don't bother with the repair, after the updates pushed I am right back where I was with the DRM/Media Player being broken.

I would guess the reason there isn't more on the internet about it is the fact we are probably in a very small group of people still using Windows for any kind of music management or playback. As such, I wouldn't hold breath for any kind of fix.

I am going to go back to plan of installing a virtual machine to use just for when I do need Media Player and not update that one.

 

[ratkil]

Yet another update, PeachBanana, check if you have windows update KB3004394 and if so uninstall it. I ran into problem where I had some updates left that kept failing to install (more that showed up after the 175). When I googled that problem it said to uninstall the one I listed above. I uninstalled it, the rest of the updates installed fine and low and behold when I tried Media Player again on a whim it worked!

 

[PeachBanana]

Yet another update, PeachBanana, check if you have windows update KB3004394 and if so uninstall it. I ran into problem where I had some updates left that kept failing to install (more that showed up after the 175). When I googled that problem it said to uninstall the one I listed above. I uninstalled it, the rest of the updates installed fine and low and behold when I tried Media Player again on a whim it worked!

how do i uninstall a specific update??

 

[PeachBanana]

Nevermind I uninstalled that specific update already and my DRM protected files are playing again!

I wonder why would windows release broken updates that could screw up many people's computer configurations