WMP toolbar prevents WMP GUI

[Francis]

Hello,

I seem to be having trouble getting Windows Media Player to launch properly
when a media file is double-clicked in Windows Explorer. Basically, the
wmplayer.exe*32 process starts and I can hear the audio, however, there is no
GUI. This happens with both audio and video files - I simply hear just the
audio and there is no GUI for WMP.

I have tried to solve this issue and have found a few interesting things:

1. If I open WMP first and then close it, the media file in Windows Explorer
will properly launch WMP with the GUI as it normally should. This will
continue to work fine until I restart my PC.

2. If I disable the WMP Toolbar, then everything will work as it should. I
double-click a media file in Windows Explorer and WMP will properly launch (I
don't have to open WMP first as mentioned above).

I am using Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit w/ SP1. The only software that I
can think of that is affecting this is Vista Codec Pack since it has a 64-bit
section that allows you to set the default media player as either 32- or
64-bit. I have kept up on all the latest drivers and updates, etc...

Does anyone have any possible solutions? I would like to keep the WMP
toolbar enabled, but it is more of a pain to launch WMP first to open a media
file.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Mark L. Ferguson]

You GUI might simply be off-screen. Click the taskbar icon for WMP, and
click Restore if necessary, to put the focus there, then press Alt-Space, M,
Up Arrow, and click the mouse.

 

[zachd [MSFT]]

That Vista Codec Pack "32bit or 64bit player" switch is just a
wrapper/front-end to my "unregmp2.exe SwapTo" trick, you can look that up
directly via searching for it. Installing a codec pack to get that
functionality saddens me for you. Why did you want that - but are still
running the 32bit player? Interesting. =)