20
Oct
05

How to Uninstall / Rollback Windows Media Player 10

By Joshua Steimle 20 Comments Categories: Reviews & How-To

So you’ve installed Windows Media Player 10, and now some of your video plays upside down, or doesn’t play at all. You’ve realized you had it better with Windows Media Player 9, but you’ve tried everything to uninstall it, or reinstall 9, but you just can’t get it to work. Yep, I was once like you. Until I found this site with instructions on how to rollback to WMP 9.

I’ve also copied the text here just in case it disappears from the original site somehow.


WARNING: Make a backup copy of the registry before attempting to uninstall media player 10 beta! Make a copy by selecting: Registry / Export Registry, save it on your Desktop.

- Click the START button and select Run.
- Type in: regedit in the command box.
- When the regedit window appears, expand the HKEY LOCAL MACHINE by clicking on the plus sign to its right.
- Now Click on the plus next to SOFTWARE, then MICROSOFT, then WINDOWS, then CURRENT VERSION and finally UNINSTALL
- When you expand the Uninstall folder, you’ll see all the programs currently installed, such as the uninstall Media Player 10 or Media Player, etc.
- Click on the folder you want to uninstall, in the box on the right you will see two strings:
- DisplayName and UninstallString.
- Double click UninstallString and a box will appear with the uninstall string highlighted.
- Right click on the highlighted entry and select COPY.
- Close the Regedit window.
- Select the START button and click RUN.
- Right click inside the command box and paste the uninstall string and click OK to uninstall Media Player 10 beta.

You will use this procedure only when the option to uninstall media player 10 beta, 10, 9, or others are not listed in the add / remove programs under the control panel.

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  • http://www.smoothharold.com Blake

    Unless you must deal with wma’s and wmv’s, just use iTunes 6 with quicktime support. Problem solved.

  • http://www.paulmayne.org Paul Mayne

    Windows Media Player sucks no matter what version you are running. I’m a fan of Windows over mac, but they really need to fix the media player. iTunes is so smooth, I don’t know how they will ever compete with that.

  • David

    tried this, and all I end up with is version 10.
    I had version 9 originally.
    Don’t know why it wont roll back

  • joey

    If you are using XP service Pack 2, go to the add/remove programs window from the control pannel. Check the box that says “show updates” (it’s near the top left corner). You will find Windows meda Player 10 listed near the end. Make sure WMP is closed. You should also close internet explorer as the WM plugin may affect rollback.

    Good luck

    PS. To those who’s solution is “use another program”, that’s pretty lame… the PC user should be able to get what they want how they want it, that’s the whole point of these forums, I don’t think it really helps to just say “uh… don’t use it” Any moron could come up with that solution! Whether you do or not, some people like WM, although, I must say… v10 is a bunch of crap!

  • Hendrik

    This just don’t work on my pc. No matter what i do, the program keeps appearing. When WMP 10 starts up it stays for 5 seconds and then it closes down. In theory the program can’t start up because i deleted everything manual (registry included). I don’t get it, is it that integrated in service pack 2?

    I agree though that WMP sucks bigtime, but i think it’s quite handy for playing videofiles from the web etc. It is’nt neccesary, i know that, but handy. If it would work, i would use it often for videofiles.

    I used Itunes for a while and it’s just no good. The program had a crappy interface and it’s slow and heavy (although I have a 2.8 Ghz, 1024 Ram pc). For all those people givin’ it up (like me) use Sonique media player, good, goodlooking, fast and multifunctional.

  • http://techno4us scrapps

    windows media player does suck @$$ if i can ill delete it but i heard you cant i have that dell media experience and its way better that that @#%# but itunes is the best

  • pctech

    click start, click run then type (“C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\Setup_wm.exe” /Uninstall) (not including the brackets.)

    This is the command line from the registry. I’m just amazed no one made it simpler for others.

    PCTECH

  • Brian

    Hi there,

    I came across this page while trying to figure out the WMP problem. I tried doing a lot of things a couple of weeks ago and couldn’t get anywhere. Couldn’t apparently get rid of it and couldn’t install a diff version. But it wasn’t really there either (WMP wouldn’t open or work) I had to end up performing a system restore.
    In the steps above, there is no media player or uninstall Media Player in the “uninstall” folder in the registry string for me.
    Will the “show updates” or [click run then type ("C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\Setup_wm.exe" /Uninstall)] work??? I don’t want to go through all this again if it just isn’t going to work.

    It’s frustrating to go to CNN.com and not be able to see their video clips because I’m prompted to get WMP 9 or above when I already have it.

    I’m running XP (media edition??) on a sony vaio laptop. The media player was already installed. I’ve had other computers that could run multiple versions of WMP.

    Did any of you have the same problems?

    Thanks

  • Greg

    I typed in run “C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\Setup_wm.exe”

    but it just says you are running the most recent version of wmp10 and all of its components. There are no updates at this time.

  • chris

    do you know how to rollback from WMP 11 back to 10?

  • ab

    I’ll go all the way back to Windows Media Player 6.4 with it’s options to open multiple players at one time, easy ablility to go full screen when watching video.

    Since I am low tech and don’t want to risk crashing the Windows XP, I manually run MP 6.4 and manually open files in it.

    Hit start button, click run option, in box type mplayer2.exe, and it brings up the player.

  • FROBER

    I couldn’t remove my MP v.11, but it is fully possible to roll back to earlier vesion, such as v.10, by simply using the built-in program “System Restor” in Windows Xp.

  • llitos

    has someone ever seen a little box which says “the file wmp.dll has a version number of 10.0.0.3937″ bla bla bla??

    Well, the Windows media player won’t work.. all you have to do is go to the registry and erase this little file. It worked on my PC, I hope it works on yours.

    on the RegisTry:

    Hkey_Local_Machine/
    Software/
    Microsoft/
    Media Player/
    Setup/
    Installed Versions/

    And in this part, you’ll see: ab(default), wmplayer.exe, wmploc.dll AND the one you want OUT!!… wmp.dll Just erase this one… and watch your videos!

    Bye

  • Mayotruck

    Ok well heres my issue… I was running WMP11 and I have rolled it back to WMP10 after alot of research…but now is it possible for me to get wmp9 on my computer, without a reformat ? Every solution I have seen says roll it back…well my “previous version” of WMP was 11 so if I roll it back it will go back and forth to WMP10->WMP11 when all i want is WMP9…

    I have wmp10 in my add remove but all i can do with that is rollback to wmp11…getting pretty upset about tis whole ordeal.

  • lefty

    I hate WMP. No matter what I do, I can’t remove it. I tried all of the listed methods, follwed their instructions to a tee, and low & behold, all the WMP files still reside safely in my C: drive. WHAT CAN I DO?!!! I wanna go back to older versions, but every time little windows pop up to indicate that WMP 10 has finally been removed from my computer, I go to install version 8 and another little window pops up to inform me that my computer already has a more recent version of WMP. AGHHHHHHH!!!!!! (tears out sideburns) I don’t even know why I care so much. I think I just want to beat this because there should be a way to fix everything!! M$ should fix their bugs!! And if all this WMP crap isn’t what they’d classify as a bug, I’d hate to see what they really call a glitch…
    Anyways, if anyone has more time and/or brainpower to devote to this cause, please notify me should you stumble upon the solution.
    Thank you.
    Peace!!!
    Luv,
    Mike F.

  • KJ

    Windows Media Player is a joke.
    Itunes is EVEN worse.

    Download Winamp….and if you need to change your file names use one of the two —— programs listed above.

    Don’t believe me? That’s fine. I just “custom installed” winamp after downloading it and chose to keep the OLD SCHOOL skin.

    No extra features. No extra ——– to slow down the media player-whose purpose may I remind you is to do just as its name says:
    Play media.

    That’s all I want my media player to do, so I use Winamp. Forget everything else.

  • Tom

    Guys, the best resolution is to go to run and type in “C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\Setup_wm.exe” /Uninstall exactly like that. the reason why it said you’re running the most updated version is because you left out the uninstall. I did this on a support call for a customer and got the same result but once I added the quotes and the uninstall suffix, it worked just fine.

  • Kit-Kat

    Are there any programs to organize music/sound files that I can use on my PC OTHER than WMP? Seriously, I feel like I know how all those poor saps who got Vista felt just trying to find this file I got off the internet in my Music list.

  • Kristin

    Greg and Tom, I am trying to dump version 10 or 11 and go to version 9. I tried a rollback but I deleted any thing to rollback too. I have tried running Program Files\Windows Media Player\Setup_wm.exe” /Uninstall 6 times, but I get an error that the file isn’t found. Yet when I hard search the exeProgram Files\Windows Media Player\Setup_wm.exe” /Uninstall but I get an error that “Windows cannot find “C:\Program’. Yet when I hard search for the executable it is still there. I just want to use WMP version 9. Can anyone help me get to it without having to rollback?

  • rtrg

    It worked perfectly. Thanks. From there I downloaded WMP9, made some audio changes, installed the only codec that works for 9 from COLE2K, which is 7.8 or 7.9. Version 8 does NOT work. Please pass this along to the site members.