Windows Media Player vanished (well, completely uninstalled)...

[Koldov]

Bit of a head scratcher...

 

Our receptionist listens to voicemail messages on her PC and last week complained that she couldn't due to... 'it's broken'...

 

So, I walk across the school expecting it to be something trivial and find the dreaded error message 'Server Execution Failed' and I didn't have time to investigate any further as it's pretty important she listens to these message ASAP.

 

Anyway, we have VLC installed so I just changed the default for .WAV and she was quite happy with that.

 

However, this week I have decided to look into it further and found I could possibly have done a few other things (stop the WMPlayer task as it may mean it just hasn't exited gracefully, register Jscript and VBscript, disable Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service, disable AV, add the user to Administrators, all the way up to SFC scannow, DISM restorehealth and finally a OS reinstall....

 

What I did try however was (what I've done on my machine previously) remove it from the Control Panel > Uninstall or change a program > Turn Windows features on or off... unfortunately this gave an error.... 'could not find the required files' or something.

 

A bit of research said this might be a .Net error so I installed 3.5, still no luck, tried with Powershell, no luck, DISM, no luck, then I tried the modern way and found it in the 'Optional Apps' section of the settings. This actually seemed to work, so I rebooted and yes, it had gone....

 

So I went in to reinstall it the same way 'add optional feature' and it has gone... I mean completely, not in the 'optional feature list, not in the 'turn windows features on or off' I've even done a 'Get-Packages' and loads of other DISM stuff and it doesn't appear in the system at all

 

I've spent far too much time on this already, I've looked in to trying to DISM extract the package from another image, but running into all sorts of issues!

 

Anyone got an easier way to do this than a OS reinstall/refresh?

[MatthewL]

Don't think I've seen WMP on machines for ages, I just use VLC as my go to now.

[Koldov]

Ah, I was hoping that wasn't an actual answer to my problem (as I've just decided on a reimage)... Yeah we have VLC installed on all the machines, I just wanted to 'fix' it. Seems strange that you can actually uninstall it far enough for it to irreversible... Especially as 99.9% of the advice is to just add it back in via settings > apps or Control panel add/remove... thing is, it just wasn't available in any of those lists anymore! Maybe it was some sort of Domain/GPO issue or Sophos, but today was my last chance to mess about with it, so I've gone for the nuclear option...

 

Tried all sorts of things but it seems that was has worked for others isn't playing ball here...

 

Interesting post here from someone who found themselves in the same situation (but their solution didn't work for me):

 

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/2d6c8ced-ef88-40df-9e19-7481d7fd95e4/windows-media-player-not-enabled-on-win-10-education-1709-and-cant-automate-addition?forum=win10itprosetup

[Koldov]

Just to update the 'solution'...

 

From the link I posted above, there was a mention of some GPO pointing the machine in question to WSUS, so I thought I'd remove all potential issues from GPOs or WSUS.

 

Took the machine off-domain and just tried simply adding the Windows Media Player back from 'Settings > Manage optional features > + Add a feature'

 

....and it worked first time!!!! It didn't appear in the basic 'optional features' list and had been pushed onto the next page.

 

So all the downloading of extra N versions of 'Windows Media Feature Packs' and the DISM commands to install package/feature may well have worked too once it was off-domain...

Edited June 20, 2023 by Koldov