Solved Media player opens but audio or video file won’t play

[SnapFire]

Media player opens but audio or video file won’t play

For the past several months, I've been having problems getting audio and video files to start playing, i.e. WMV, MP3, FLAC, MPEG, WAV, AVI, etc. The issue isn't isolated to Windows Media Player, although that is the player I use most often.

Here's what happens:
1) I Navigate to my media files via Windows Explorer.
2) Double click the file or select multiple files and right click "Play in Windows Media Player".
3) WMP will open but that is it. The blue circle will spin forever and the audio or video will never play.

My temporary solution:
1) Reboot the computer
OR
1) Force close WMP by clicking the "X" to close the program.
2) Go into Task Manager and kill the app even though I just closed it via clicking "X".
3) Re-open WMP by clicking the WMP launch icon, go into Tools / Options / Privacy / and click 'Clear History' and 'Clear Caches'.
4) Close WMP and then go back to Windows explorer and re-click on the desired file I want to play.

WMP will work fine until I either press stop and then play again on the same file or if I click on a different file in Windows Explorer.

I've tried other media players and I get the same result. The media program will open but the file never plays. The problem occurs regardless if I select the file to be played from Windows Explorer or from the media player’s file / open command.

In late December 2011, I went back to an earlier image of my system from July 2011. Everything seemed to work fine even after installing all of the patches since July. Then after about a week, the problem started occurring again. I have not installed any Windows updates since 12/31/11.

 

[SnapFire]

I posted this same question in the "Music, Pictures & Video" section and here is the answer I received which worked:

Hey snapfire

I would check default program settings and file associations.
Make sure that the programs you are using to open these file types aren't butting heads so to speak
(ie: set WMP to open all file types it can and take away permissions for your "other" program.

Go here for information on setting default programs:
Change which programs Windows uses by default