Solved Windows Media Player 12; context menu & playlist item names problems

[Stormbow]

Windows Media Player 12; context menu & playlist item names problems

My hard drive failed a few months back. New HDD, reinstalled Windows 7. Reinstalled programs and games. Everything except Windows Media Player was fine.

Windows Media Player (12) was giving me a lot of problems with playlists. Any time I right click an avi, mp3, mp4, mkv, etc the item I'm adding to a playlist is added with some weird name and not the actual, displayed file name from Windows Explorer view of the file.

For example: A file named "s01e01 - TVShowEpisodeName.mp4" is now added to the playlist as "TVShowName.S01E01.HDTV.x264-KILLERS[ettv]" instead of just "s01e01 - TVShowEpisodeName".

Hoping to fix the problem by uninstalling and reinstalling, I uninstalled WMP 12.

When I reinstalled WMP 12, nothing had changed. Worse, now when I right click on a MKV movie file, there is no longer an option to "Add to Windows Media Player list" like I used to have and that I still get with MP4 et all movies.

Can anyone tell me how to fix this context menu issue and/or how to get WMP 12 to only show filenames in playlists? I've been all over Google for weeks now and I can't resolve either of these issues. I'm finally at my wit's end and have to ask someone...

Many thanks in advance.

 

[Stormbow]

Context Menu Solution
1. Reinstall K-Lite Codec Pack (I used Mega) and the .mkv files get their "Add to Windows Media Player list" context menu back.

Playlist File Name Workaround
1. Display the Playlist in the Library (not the list as it's playing in WMP).
2. Right click the funky file names and rename to the desired Playlist name.

Solved well enough for me.