# Has anyone ever experienced these new bugs & exploits being introduced in Windows Media Player 12 for Windows 10 from it's updates?



## WadmodderJune16 (Oct 31, 2020)

We all know that Windows 10 gets bloated with updates twice every year, but it also breaks a lot of components every time, but mostly rarely.

But on the meat of the topic, almost every time since at least 2018, Windows Media Player continues to break certain features of the program, causing many databased to be corrupted, Audio & Video files not opening, & most of it's functions not even working. It's speculated that Microsoft is poorly maintaining their components being included in Windows 10, & Windows Media Player is no exception. It's speculated that Microsoft doesn't care about Windows Media Player being deprecated or discontinued, or they don't even bother to bug test & fix their Windows 10 updates before release to make sure the components still work. And it's not like Microsoft lost the source code to the Windows 10 version of Windows Media Player 12 or anything, it's badly being broken in some instances.

Microsoft at one point planned to replace Windows Media Player with Groove Music & Movies & TV, but likely gave up on it likely due to PC software & games utilizing it's supposed "Cross-Application Syncing" feature, & that removing Windows Media Player would cause these Games & Software to break.

Here is a few of these reports of some of these new bugs & exploits being introduced, most of them are from the WindowsReport blog:









						Windows 10 KB4579311 fails to install and causes other issues
					

After downloading Windows 10 KB4579311 and KB4577671, users have found that it’s causing a wide range of issues, including system crashes and endless installation loop. On October 13, fondly referred to as Patch Tuesday, Microsoft rolled out the October Patch Tuesday cumulative updates to...




					www.windowslatest.com
				











						Windows Media Player Not Syncing Music Error - How To Fix It - Tech News and Discoveries | Henri Le Chart Noir
					

Many users experienced a Windows Media Player issue that prevented them from syncing all the music on their PCs. One Windows 10 user reported: "My Win 10 - The latest news




					henrilechatnoir.com
				











						Microsoft Breaks Windows Media Player In Latest Windows 10 Update
					

Yet another bug gets introduced into Windows 10 version 1809.




					www.forbes.com
				











						Windows Media Player cannot find the file [TECHNICIAN FIX]
					

In order to fix the Windows Media Player error message: cannot find the file, first you have to perform a file format check and check the path afterward.




					windowsreport.com
				











						FIX: Windows Media Player has Stopped Working
					

If the Windows Media Player stopped working error bothers you, fix it by disabling and enabling Windows Media Player again or updating Windows 10.




					windowsreport.com
				











						Windows Media Player isn’t syncing music on my PC [FIXED]
					

If Windows Media Player is not syncing all music, you will need to run the troubleshooter or check the sync settings in Windows Media Player.




					windowsreport.com
				











						Windows Media Player is the next app with a target on its back
					

By now we are all used to that little pop-up which advertises Edge when we open Chrome, expounding on the battery-saving virtues of the Microsoft app.  It see



					mspoweruser.com
				











						FIX: Windows Media Player cannot access the file
					

To fix Windows Media Player cannot access the file error, you need to grant full permission to the folder in which your file is, and follow the next steps.




					windowsreport.com
				











						Windows Media Player doesn’t show video? Try these solutions
					

Windows Media Player doesn't show video only audio on your PC? Fix this issue by reinstalling Windows Media Player, or try our other solutions.




					windowsreport.com
				











						Microsoft urging Windows 10 users to move on from Windows Media Player
					

Microsoft’s latest iteration of it’s popular OS, Windows 10 builds upon a completely different base. With the Microsoft Store and Universal Apps, Microsoft is trying to ditch the old and reliable x86 platform in favor of the modern UWP apps. Many of the old apps are being deprecated in favor of...




					www.windowslatest.com
				











						Microsoft confirms Windows Media Player issues in latest Windows 10 updates
					

Microsoft recently released new cumulative updates for Windows 10. The updates were released for both Windows 10 October 2018 Update (version 1809) and April 2018 Update (version 1803) with several fixes and improvements. Today, Microsoft updated the support document of the most recent Windows...




					www.windowslatest.com
				











						Windows 10 May 2020 Update bug hits Storage Spaces, Defrag tool
					

The Windows 10 May 2020 Update is being rolled out in phases and Microsoft has limited the availability to devices running Windows 10 versions 1903 and 1909 with compatible drivers and hardware. Windows 10 version 2004 is only available for those who seek the update via Windows Update. A number...




					www.windowslatest.com
				











						Windows Media Player cannot download media information for CD [FIX]
					

If Windows Media Player cannot download media information for CD, try fixing it by reinstalling Windows Media Player or running WMP Configuration tool.




					windowsreport.com
				











						Windows Media Player cannot detect the length of the file [FULL FIX]
					

When the Windows media player cannot detect the length of the file error occurs, fix it by dropping each track individually or running the troubleshooter.




					windowsreport.com
				











						How to fix Windows Media Player green screen problems [FULL FIX]
					

Having problems with green screen in Windows Media Player? Fix them by changing Media Player settings or try our other solutions.




					windowsreport.com
				











						Windows Media Player cannot skip forward [QUICK FIX]
					

If Windows Media Player cannot skip forward, run the troubleshooter or long press on the forward button to remedy the issue.




					windowsreport.com
				











						How to fix Windows Media Player cannot play the file error
					

Did you encounter Windows Media Player cannot play the file error on your PC? Fix it by downloading the required codecs or try our other solutions.




					windowsreport.com
				











						Windows Media Player cannot burn some of the files [FIXED by EXPERTS]
					

In order to fix the issue regarding Windows Media Player not burning files, first you should remove incompatible files or edit the file details.




					windowsreport.com
				











						What files are supported by Windows Media Player?
					

If Windows Media Player cannot open WAV/MP3/MP4/AVI/MKV/MPG/MOV files, try reinstalling the software, installing new codec packs, or fixing corrupted files.




					windowsreport.com
				











						Fixed: Windows Media Player Encountered an Error While Playing File
					

If your Windows Media Player cannot play files due to various error messages, you can use the 8 solutions listed in this guide to fix it.




					windowsreport.com
				











						Windows Media Player cannot connect to the server error [SOLVED]
					

To fix the Windows Media Player cannot connect to the server error, check Office 365 authentication or add SharePoint URL to IE Trusted Sites




					windowsreport.com
				











						Windows Media Player can't burn the disc because the disc is in use [FIX]
					

In order to fix the error message disallowing WMP to burn a CD, first you should restart your PC and secondly you should update/re-install the driver.




					windowsreport.com
				











						Windows Media Player cannot change album art [FIX IT LIKE A PRO]
					

In case the Windows Media Player cannot change album art error bothers you, fix it by changing File Permissions or by using the Tag Editor.




					windowsreport.com
				











						Windows Media Player doesn't find album info? Here's how to fix it
					

Windows Media Player doesn’t find album info? Fix it by refreshing Media Player’s Database or by reinstalling Windows Media Player.




					windowsreport.com
				











						Windows Media Player cannot delete a file from the device [FIX]
					

If Windows Media Player cannot delete a file from the device, you will have to rebuild the media database or reset the media library.




					windowsreport.com
				











						Windows Media Player encountered a problem with the skin file [FIX]
					

If you're getting Windows Media Player skin file errors after installing a new skin, use this guide to fix the problem in no time.




					windowsreport.com
				











						Windows Media Player Crashes in Windows 10/11 [QUICK FIX]
					

If Windows Media Player keeps crashing on your PC, you can fix it by running the build-in troubleshooter. You can also run the SFC command.




					windowsreport.com
				











						Windows Media Player does not recognize blank CD? Fix it now
					

Windows Media Player doesn't recognize a blank CD on your PC? Make sure that your drivers are up to date, or try our other solutions.




					windowsreport.com
				











						Required video codec is not installed Media Player error [EXPERT FIX]
					

In order to fix the Windows Media Player error message regarding a missing codec, you should make sure that you have WMP features enabled.




					windowsreport.com
				











						FIX: Windows Media Player won't rip tracks in Windows 10/11
					

If Windows Media Player cannot rip music in Windows 10, first manage music libraries, and then improve the quality of ripped music.




					windowsreport.com
				











						Windows 10 suggests you move from WMP to Movies and TV app
					

While the Windows Media Player is a favorite among users, Windows 10 has been suggesting users to move to the Movies and TV app. Read more here.




					news.thewindowsclub.com
				











						Broken FLAC support is a new Known Issue in the Windows 10 October 2018 Update
					

Windows 10 users should be aware that if they update to the Windows 10 October 2018 Update it may affect their ability to listen to uncompressed music.  Since



					mspoweruser.com
				











						Microsoft looking to replace Windows Media Player with Movies & TV app
					

Microsoft wants Windows users to use Movies & TV app instead of Windows Media Player Windows Media Player (WMP) has almost become an integral part of




					www.techworm.net
				




Also, the developers of the Wine compatibility layer for Linux is not going to spend the time or resources to reverse engineer all the APIs of Windows Media Player anytime soon, as it consists of the above mentioned syncing features for applications, include PC Games & Software, as well as Microsoft products, all of which are not widely documented anywhere on internet forums, and were only documented by third-party developers who got SDKs from Microsoft. So yeah, as of today, nobody has done a reverse-engineer attempt for Windows Media Player's APIs, not even using Virtual Machine software (VMWare, VirtualBox, PCem, Hyper-V, & QEMU) and very likely, it will never be done.

Why Microsoft still hasn't bothered to remove Windows Media Player support in Microsoft Office, & why Microsoft still hasn't ported the remaining Microsoft Office desktop applications to both HTML5 & Mobile platforms is beyond me. Maybe Microsoft just hates HTML5, WHATWG & the Open-Source community as money in general. It's very unlikely in the future, but I want to see Windows Media Player open-sourced under the MIT License.

The closest things I can compare the Windows 10 version of Windows Media Player 12 in the "poorly maintained" & "completely abandoned" categories are these:

- for Poorly Maintained: Rockstar Games' later digital distribution re-releases of the PC ports of Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City & San Andreas. These later digital distribution releases of these PC ports mostly breaks a lot of things, including mod support, & mouse compatibility. But hey, at least there playable than the awful Xbox 360 & PS3 versions of San Andreas which was a shoddy port of the mobile version of the latter.
- for Completely Abandoned: Valve's Half-Life Source. The SteamPipe update of the Source engine version of Half-Life 1 broke a lot of features & introduced new bugs, including but not limited to. Badly coded Ai, visual glitches in the maps (most notable c2a4c & c2a5c), lack of collision detection code for the tentacles, the sounds of scientists & security guards playing their pain sounds even when they aren't hurt, and many more that breaks the game. Your only chance to patch the map related problems is to combine the Resized Maps (available on GameBanana) with the maps already included in Half-Life Source (though any chances of a unofficial "Maps-Only" patch is rather slim). In spite of these flaws however, It's still better than the awful Half-Life 2 "Paid Mod" abominations Prospekt & Hunt Down The Freeman.

If you ever noticed these bugs from those articles that I put on this discussion, let me know, as Windows Media Player 12 for Windows 10 is very poorly maintained in later updates for Windows 10.

What do you think, should Windows Media Player be open-sourced to the MIT License, or should the Wine compatibility layer developers reverse engineer Windows Media Player's APIs? Your opinion in this discussion here.


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## Kellan Meig'h (Nov 9, 2020)

The more I read about this, the more my head hurt. In a nutshell, is Win Media Player finally gone corrupt due to bad programming? You know the old saying, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Seems like that is the case here. My semi-educated guess would be the last developer that worked on WMP finally retired and the new programmers have no idea how to deal with it. If you can't fix it, just move along to the next new flavor of video player.

I've used Wine, had no problems but I'm not a gamer, either. The Sims or Sim City 4 and some Hoyle card/board/casino games are about it and I run them on VirtualBox/Win XP Pro SP3. I also don't XBox, either. I use VLC for audio/video play and Cdex (32 bit) for ripping. My favorite for CD burning is CDburnerXP. Works just fine on Win 10.

this is typical of Micro$oft, though. Roll out the new bugs in an update that wasn't thoroughly tested on older computers beforehand. We are the Beta testers, maybe Alpha testers in some cases. I've had that "Infinite install loop" happen to me. On shutdown, it acts like it's installing something, never finishes. On startup, it does the same thing, acts like it's installing & configuring. Finally went started rebooting when I would select "Shut Down" from the menu.

Did a clean install with Media Creation Tool, everything's fine now. Well, we shall see how M$ digs their way out of this.


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## WadmodderJune16 (Nov 10, 2020)

Kellan Meig'h said:


> The more I read about this, the more my head hurt. In a nutshell, is Win Media Player finally gone corrupt due to bad programming? You know the old saying, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Seems like that is the case here. My semi-educated guess would be the last developer that worked on WMP finally retired and the new programmers have no idea how to deal with it. If you can't fix it, just move along to the next new flavor of video player.


If that's the case with Microsoft's Windows Media Player 12 in Windows 10, I might want to do a video in a similar vain to YouTube user decino's video "Doom Challenges Deemed Impossible", possibly titled "Wine Reverse-Engineer Challenges Deemed Impossible" focusing on Reverse-Engineer attempts about Microsoft Windows APIs that are deemed impossible & that the developers of the Wine API for Linux likely will never have time to implement a reverse-engineered version of these APIs related to Windows Media Player's compatibility with PC games & software.

I might use these videos as reference material for making my video regarding Windows APIs that are "Deemed Impossible" to reverse engineer in Wine.









Also, if this is indeed mostly true, Reverse-Engineer laws regarding software in the European Union is entirely different compared to those in the United States, if anybody can confirm that.

Other than that, It's unlikely Microsoft will ever open source their outdated Windows Media Player in the future to the MIT License anytime soon, and why Microsoft is taking forever to migrate away from their now-forgotten ActiveX platform to HTML5 is beyond me.


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## Kellan Meig'h (Nov 10, 2020)

So, it's the fact the Windows Media Player APIs are not included in the EU and Korean versions but the second video clearly states you can download the missing items as an add-on to Windows 10.

Also, it would seem after a preliminary search, it's the DRM that's the issue and to be honest, DRM code is not open source. Never will be. What DRM hacks (I call them hacks) that have been done, they were accomplished through reverse engineering, not by someone handing a programmer the code to insert in Wine. So yeah, your first video really doesn't work as well as saying the latest version of Doom won't play in Wine due to DRM issues.

And, I'm going to guess Doom won't run on the latest versions of Windows 10 because the ability to read and process DRM protection has been removed from those recent Win 10 distros.

Those needed APIs are in other products, too. VLC comes to mind. I don't have WMP, Groove Music or Movies & TV on my Win 10 distro and it runs games, video and mp3 just fine with VLC installed. I'm pretty sure some of my games might have installed their own APIs when I did the installation.

Media Feature Pack

So, if that still doesn't fix the problem, then it would be with the games having DRM that can't be read by Windows 10.

This is just my preliminary opinion and there might be other software/API issues to battle.


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## WadmodderJune16 (Nov 11, 2020)

I don't even think that the Windows Media/PlaysForSure DRM or PlayReady DRM is implemented in any shape or form in nearly every PC game released in the 2000s, in either the audio or video files in any of those games' files. I'm thinking the main Copy Protection related to those games has to be the Executable code for many of these games having to make sure Windows Media Player is installed on your PC.

Try testing any PC game you might own, and play any of the audio or video files on VLC or other open-source media player software, and if this isn't the case with the audio or video files, but rather it's the coding of the EXE files of many PC games requiring Windows Media Player to play those games. Let Me Know If This Is Correct.

In addition to these problems, I have no reason to believe that Windows Media Player 12 isn't the intended HTML5 implementation from Microsoft, and it's likely a new way for Microsoft to compete against HTML5 from the W3C & WHATWG after the failure of their Silverlight API.


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## volkinaxe (Nov 23, 2020)

having this happin to me


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## volkinaxe (Nov 23, 2020)

volkinaxe said:


> having this happin to me











						Snip & Sketch tool not working
					

Snip & Sketch not working correctly after recent update. When I select New snip the screen shades like normal but then wont capture my snip from any application. It will still capture my snip from



					answers.microsoft.com


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## Kellan Meig'h (Nov 25, 2020)

volkinaxe said:


> Snip & Sketch tool not working
> 
> 
> Snip & Sketch not working correctly after recent update. When I select New snip the screen shades like normal but then wont capture my snip from any application. It will still capture my snip from
> ...


Cross Post? Anyway, you know, often times it is required to do a clean install of Windows to get rid of nagging issues. Yeah, I ran a Dell Latitude work laptop Windows XP Pro SP3 machine for sixteen years without doing a reinstall but hey, I babied that machine. The guy that got the machine after I retirede killed it in a month. Just sayin' you might be best served by doing a reinstall to get rid of issues.


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## Kellan Meig'h (Nov 26, 2020)

(I hate to double post)

The reality is, WMP is dead. Micro$oft will not be doing anything further with it so we all must move on. I would suggest using VideoLan VLC because it will come with its codecs in the installer.

And, just because the game won't run on Windows 10 doesn't mean it's not the game's fault. Sometimes, it is the game.


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