windows media player

o ive been having problems with itunes so i decided to switch over to windows media player. now, it will not recognize all the music files i have. ive installed the codecs that should allow WMP to recognize m4a files yet it will not. i have the 3ivx codec installed as well as several others.

i removed all the media from the library and readded it, and now it wont even pick up some of the mp3's i have on file.


any ideas?

Make sure that WMP is the default player for all the filetypes that you want it to play. iTunes took over some of those extensions and when you uninstalled it, those extensions assigned to iTunes are not automatically re-linked to WMP (or any other media player).

Post again if you need instructions--however, I bet you know what I'm talking about.

BTW: I exchanged my 4G iPod Nano for a Creative Zen Vision: M (30GB) for the same price. Best exchange I ever made. iTunes was the main reason I switched. Stinkiest music software ever. Period.

you could also try coles codec it seems to have all the codecs you need

i hope itunes dies

the hell with that propriotary crap

It really doesn't make sense that itunes' overwriting the file associations would prevent WMP from reading mp3 files, but try right-clicking on an mp3 and click open with, and then make sure windows media player is selected and that the "always open with ..." box is checked. It's more likely a codec problem though. Whenever I work on a machine with codec issues I just nuke all of the codecs via device manager and install the latest full K-Lite codec pack. It's constantly revised with the newest stable editions of all kinds of codecs for playback, encoding, and decoding. Whether you want to install media player classic with it is up to you and can be disabled when installing. I love media player classic for video and audio file playback but it doesn't have much of a "library" per se, so for mp3's I usually stick to winamp or musikcube and just use MPC for video and wav-files.


Edit: And I mean constantly revised... I just got the 2.83 version like two days ago and they already have an updated version available... not sure if this a good thing or bad

ok i uninstalled all the codecs, installed the k-lite one, and still no m4a's in WMP.
so WMP can play then if i say open with, but how can i get them to be viewed in my library. ive tried adding them and it just doesnt work.

what else do you guys use if not itunes

Cypher720 said:

what else do you guys use if not itunes

Click to expand...

MusikCube is excellent (extremely light-weight and easy to configure) and has mp3-player handling capabilities. It comes with FLAC, ogg, and various other plugins built-in. Can be configured to synchronize with your media folder(s) at program start. Uses a lightweight database so it doesn't get bogged-down like itunes and WMP do once it hits above 7,000 songs or so. It also has integrated searching so you don't have to mess around with a separate media library. Not skinnable (except with Windowblinds) and has a very plain interface.


Winamp 5 is pretty standard. I recommend downloading one of the slightly-older versions of WA5 on oldversion.com . Not extremely light-weight but it has lots of plugins (ie the M4a plugin and ML ipod plugin to give it AAC and ipod compatibility, or the very nifty Toaster plugin), and you can run milkdrop on it. Lots of skins available for this one.


I've heard alot of people recommend Media Monkey and other than its' being able to run alot of winamp's plugins I wasn't really that impressed with it personally. Feels sluggish and bulky compared to winamp. Looks the most like itunes of these.

There's also Foobar2k, but you'll want to set aside at least 6 hours for configuration. Once it's set up it's nice and can be customized like crazy, but it takes more time and patience than I have to customize. I have seen some pretty impressive Foobar setups though.