Windows Media Player always running, how can I turn it off?

L

liquidsoap89

New Member
Hey everyone, I've been having this problem with Windows Media Player for a long long time. Basically... It's always running. Before I upgraded my computer my boot times would always be incredibly slow, and I found that WMP was causing that. So normally I would just uninstall it in the "Turn Windows features on or off" tab, but there has to be a better way to fix this. When I open up my task manager, in the processes tab it's currently there using 76K of my memory. Performance wise it's not an issue anymore, I got a SSD and it's nice and fast now; but I'm one of those people that can't leave something alone if it's "wrong".

I was looking online, and some people said an issue can come up in the Windows Sync Center, so I went there but there were no problems. There's no icon in my startup folder, and I can't see it in the startup tab in MSCONFIG. I also read that there have been issues with Logitech G19 keyboards (which I DO have) and WMP, but I couldn't really find any specific solutions to try. Also, I would usually turn on the sync function in WMP so I could watch movies on my PS3, but since I've reformatted recently, I haven't set that up yet. Now normally that would make sense as to why WMP is always running, if it's set up to stream my movies and stuff... But that isn't currently the case since I haven't set it up.

Does anybody have any ideas? There has to be a solution that doesn't involve uninstalling it completely, because when I do that I find that some programs tend to not work properly (like they rely on parts of WMP to function or something). Thanks in advance!

OH! And one issue I was having when I used to actually use WMP, was that when I would close it, my music (or whatever I was using it for) would continue to play, but WMP itself would be closed. I guess this would be nice if you wanted to continue to listen to music without the player open, but that's not the case for me. I had to close it in the processes tab in the task manager if I actually wanted the music to stop.
 
Im guessing. .....did you goto msconfig and turn off everything ya don't need.
Still not clear whats running. Was this a upgrade or retail. Did you do a full format previously? did you have this problem before the upgrade if ya did. Sorry, its not making
much sense.
 
Okay, so I've done a ton of reformats since I've gotten Win 7, it's something I try to do somewhat regularly. I used to use WMP years ago (obviously a much older version) and I never had this problem. In msconfig, under the startup tab, there's nothing there for WMP. It shows up in my task manager using up a fair amount of resources.

I just opened it up the other day to play a song (just as a test), and since then I haven't shut off my computer. Now, whenever I press the play button on my keyboard, WMP will start playing that song again, even though it's been closed (my Zune player -which is what I'm actually using the play button to control- also starts playing, which is good). This will stop when I restart my computer. But the other issues (WMP using resources mostly) will persist.

EDIT: And again, I know I can uninstall it using the "turn windows features on or off" option, but that has also caused a few compatibility issues in the past.
 
liquidsoap89 said:
Okay, so I've done a ton of reformats since I've gotten Win 7, it's something I try to do somewhat regularly. I used to use WMP years ago (obviously a much older version) and I never had this problem. In msconfig, under the startup tab, there's nothing there for WMP. It shows up in my task manager using up a fair amount of resources.

I just opened it up the other day to play a song (just as a test), and since then I haven't shut off my computer. Now, whenever I press the play button on my keyboard, WMP will start playing that song again, even though it's been closed (my Zune player -which is what I'm actually using the play button to control- also starts playing, which is good). This will stop when I restart my computer. But the other issues (WMP using resources mostly) will persist.

EDIT: And again, I know I can uninstall it using the "turn windows features on or off" option, but that has also caused a few compatibility issues in the past.
Click to expand...

Try putting a batch file into the start up folder. Find out what the Windows Media Player Process name is...

Write this in notepad, and then save it as all files, WMPKill.bat

Code: 
 @echo off
tskill [COLOR="Red"]process name without the .exe on it though[/COLOR]

save it. Restart Windows.

If you find that it closes and just re opens, you need to try:
Code: 
 @echo off
:1
tskill [COLOR="Red"]process name without the .exe on it though[/COLOR]
goto 1

This will keep the command going infinitely. Just see if that sorts it out, and if so, you will just have to minimise it on start up. The second code kicks off a lot of error messages, but ignore those. It isn't the proper code but it works, it just constantly tells windows to kill WMP even when it isn't open, which then causes it to say that WMP doesn't exist, until it re opens, then it kills again.
 
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