Windows Media Player encountered a problem while playing the file

Hello.
A year ago, a random day, I suddenly started to face a problem with playing sound files:



This error message kept popping up when trying to play any type of sound file. (mp3, avi, m4a, you name it)
When trying it with another media player (VLC Media Player), no error appeared, but no sound either (just a blank screen and the play button doing nothing)
Playing video files (mp4, avi, flv, ...) did show the video, but no sound at all.
I tried numerous things like installing codec packs like K-Lite, with no positive results.
After some searching , I did find a "fix" by going into the settings of the Playback devices and checking disable all sound effects, however I think this isn't a significant fix and worse issues are behind this.
(I haven't actually thought about posting a thread about this the entire year )

I recently tried to find a better fix for this. The integrated Windows problem solvers does nothing productive in this situation. It never find any problems.
I did try to restore WMP settings to default, no difference either.

As far as I can remember, this issue arose a month or so after I updated my Realtek HD Audio drivers. That is why I blame that. I couldn't roll it back, but I managed to find the "stock" drivers for my PC model on the manufacturer's site (eMachines model ET1870; bought back in 2011), but that did not solve anything either.
Also, because of this I doubt if updating audio drivers is a very good idea... I think it destabilized my computer's audio system as my motherboard might not be 100% compatible with a later driver version. I could be completely wrong here and it'll be good if someone could prove me so :)

Thank you for your time and I'll appreciate any useful help!

If it was a driver issue, you would have the issue as soon as you started the PC, not a month later. Create a manual System Restore point (System Restore) and update your drivers.

If it gets worse, roll back the drivers or restore the system with the manual restore point you just created. After all, You can still try to install even an older driver.

I have updated the drivers to the latest version. Nothing became worse, but nothing became better either, still the same error message.

It looks like it has been solved by upgrading to Windows 10... Strange, but relieving :) Hopefully it won't return.