Prevent Windows Media Player from accessing Internet

[Guest]

I have an ISDN dialup Internet connection, with the associated limitations on
usage. Every time I open Windows Media Player on my PC to play a CD while I
work, it forces my ISDN modem to dialup, so it is evidently attempting to
access the Net. This is going to result in my ISP charging me for extra time
or dropping me altogether at some point. My modem is set to hang up after 12
mintues, but it will never hang up if the Windows Media Player is open.

I don't use any of the stuff written to for the herd mentality of today's
computer crowd (Urge, music downloading, etc); I just use it locally to play
WAV files & CD's. How can I prevent Windows Media Player from ever attempting
Internet connection except when I tell it to update?

 

[Guest]

Sorry - maybe this wasn't the right group. I reposted in the WMP group, which
I found after posting here. Still, I won't turn down an answer here.

TIA.

 

[Guest]

you can change the settings so it does not look for information on he net to
populate the information fields and get the album art for whatever CD you are
loading, also you can create a rule in you fire wall to block it

 

[Alan Edwards]

You might try stopping the
Library from getting information in WMP-Tools-Options as well as
unchecking the relevant options on the Player tab and Privacy tab.

Browse through all the tabs in Tools-Options to see the there are
others (as you don't mention the version of WMP)


....Alan

 

[... et al.]

I have an ISDN dialup Internet connection, with the associated limitations on
usage. Every time I open Windows Media Player on my PC to play a CD while I
work, it forces my ISDN modem to dialup, so it is evidently attempting to
access the Net. This is going to result in my ISP charging me for extra time
or dropping me altogether at some point. My modem is set to hang up after 12
mintues, but it will never hang up if the Windows Media Player is open.

I don't use any of the stuff written to for the herd mentality of today's
computer crowd (Urge, music downloading, etc); I just use it locally to play
WAV files & CD's. How can I prevent Windows Media Player from ever attempting
Internet connection except when I tell it to update?

Even after turning off all the internet-contacting settings
scattered throughout Windows Media Player's settings you will
find that it still tries to call home!

Hopefully this will help. Open Notepad, copy and paste what is
between the dashed lines below, save the file as
"WMP_No_AutoUpdate.reg" including quote-marks, rightclick the
resulting file and /merge/ it with the registry.

---------------------------------------------------------------
REGEDIT4

[HKey_Local_Machine\Software\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\PlayerUpgrade]
"EnableAutoUpgrade"="no"
; There needs to be a blank line below this one.


---------------------------------------------------------------

But since you are *not_allowed* to stop Windows Media Player from
calling home in the program-settings ( i.e. accessing the
internet to supposedly check for updates ), do *use_another*
program to play your media-files. There are many free ones of
different complexity and capabilities.

example: 'VLC Media Player' @ <http://www.videolan.org/>