Removing Media Player in right-click menu

Quick Tip: how to remove all the garbage that accumulates in the right-click context menu in Windows Explorer after you make an update/upgrade to Media Player.

Example: I upgrade my home server to Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1. It forces me to upgrade to Media Player 10. OK, sure, go ahead, whatever. But now when I right-click a media file I have to practically scroll through a long list of MP-specific fluff in order get what I want (usually Rename or Properties). Here's the fix:

Click Start, Run and type in regsvr32 /u wmpshell.dll

That's it! Unregister WMP Shell. It's so simple...

[UPDATE] For Vista, you'll need to run this command in elevated-mode.

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A hurricane is coming and I can't be bothered.iLoveBees and Halo 2ASP.NET tip: output the 'last saved' CSS file

60 Comments

Anonymous October 6. 2007 07:18

thank you a thousand times, you made my day!

FUCK MICROSOFT

ASSMAN October 6. 2007 07:18

Drool.. I love you.

Anonymous October 6. 2007 07:18

Master

Anonymous October 6. 2007 07:18

You are the man!

Anonymous October 6. 2007 07:18

mhmmm... great!!!

Anonymous October 6. 2007 07:18

Thanks a ton, you saved me from more than 2seconds of googling on this problem.

Anonymous October 6. 2007 07:18

thnx

Anonymous October 6. 2007 07:18

F**king Brillant !!

Does anyone know though a program for adding / removing context menu items without having to scroll through regedit. I have Context Menu Editor which removes them simple enough but would love to find the same program that adds them just as easily.

Pete October 6. 2007 07:18

Great tip! I've been trying to find this out. Thank you!

Wonder why Microsoft doesn't make this info a little more freely available, hmm?

Anonymous October 6. 2007 07:18

totally made my day!

Anonymous October 6. 2007 07:18

thanks a lot i was about to waste a bunch of time in the registry till i found this...

Anonymous October 6. 2007 07:18

You Rock!!! Thanks For That!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

woohoo October 6. 2007 07:18

cant thank you enough.

bill gates is going to hell!!

Anonymous October 6. 2007 07:18

You made my day, Thank's a bunch

Anonymous October 6. 2007 07:18

i've been looking for that for quite a time now. thx a lot...

Anonymous October 6. 2007 07:18

your my f**king hero!!

Anonymous October 6. 2007 07:18

thx a lot...windows really made it tough to remove native program stuff, eh =)

Hjalte October 6. 2007 07:18

You saved my day

markus October 6. 2007 07:18

Thank you!

Anonymous October 6. 2007 07:18

yeah, that's much better...many thanks

Andrew October 6. 2007 07:18

Nice man, I was about to go wading through the registry. Mad props to you.

Sean October 6. 2007 07:18

Awesome. Thanks! I can live without WMP being default, it's just handy having it there.

Anonymous October 6. 2007 07:18

You're the business alright. V.nice

Anonymous October 6. 2007 07:18

Oh my god that's awesome!

Anonymous October 6. 2007 07:18

At first I thought this was perfect EXCEPT ....

it become impossible to have WMP as the default player any longer. Everytime you click on a media file windows will ask you to choose a program. You can no longer permenantly associate a media file with WMP. The only way to fix this was to reregister the DLL. Back to square one ..

Anonymous October 6. 2007 07:18

You are the best - almost given up in trying to find a solution. This needs to be more widely publiced on all the fix & tweek websites.

Anonymous October 6. 2007 07:18

Thanks a lot. Looks much better now.

Anonymous October 6. 2007 07:18

My god, you are a life saver.I searched the registry for hours, making backups and deleteing stuff (i hope my win still works after reboot ). Thank u so much!

mark October 6. 2007 07:18

my media player won't uninstall

Bryan Peters October 6. 2007 07:18

You won't be able to uninstall Media Player - only remove references to it. It's a part of the OS just like Internet Explorer.

Jooch October 6. 2007 07:18

Wow, thats amazing! I have been searching the register over and over again for that context menu (which cannot be found ofcoarse).

Why does Microsoft ignore power users so often, it's damn right annoying!

-DeN- October 6. 2007 07:18

YUP, that's perfectly what i was looking for !

Anonymous October 6. 2007 07:18

I'm on my knees

Anonymous October 6. 2007 07:18

Love you dude!

Anonymous October 6. 2007 07:18

Gracias.

Anonymous October 6. 2007 07:18

THANK YOU!!!

$%^#@ Microsoft...

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Buy Levitra October 6. 2007 07:18

Great article! Thanks.

Phentermine" />

Phentermine October 6. 2007 07:18

Thanks for interesting article.

Anonymous October 6. 2007 07:18

Really simple. Thanks a lot. I was gonna go through my registry too.

Anonymous October 6. 2007 07:18

great! I've long been looking for this. thanx!

Anonymous October 6. 2007 07:18

Or you could do the same with the built in "Set Program Access And Defaults" feature found on the start menu or by going Control Panel > Add Remove Programs > Set Program Access And Defaults.

Sam October 6. 2007 07:18

Beautiful, thank you very much.

Greg H October 6. 2007 07:18

really, thank you. I know it probably wasn't too hard to find, but it took me months of googling to find this answer. So easy. +1 to you.

Anonymous October 6. 2007 07:18

Thanks SOOOOOO much! You are now my Idol

Neryam October 6. 2007 07:18

Thanks so much. Wasted time wading through the registry.. I guess I could have just uninstalled bloody WMP but ah, this is much better.

Bryan Peters October 6. 2007 07:18

^^ That's the point of removing WMP from the right-click menu. Media Player is automatically embedded on most Windows systems, and very difficult to remove. This is just a simple way of cleaning it up.

Dogge from sweden October 6. 2007 07:18

thnx dude ;)

Anonymous October 6. 2007 07:18

You're a GOD among men. I will remember your words of wisdom!

Anonymous October 6. 2007 07:18

Who even wants to use WMP, when there are better players for Windows, like Winamp for newbies and Foobar2000 for trve hardkore users.

Victr October 6. 2007 07:18

Thank you very much for this tip.

Brunon October 6. 2007 07:18

Brilliant!

Anonymous October 6. 2007 07:18

Great! You made my late evening!

Anonymous October 6. 2007 07:18

Thanks man, saved me A LOT of time.

sk October 6. 2007 07:18

made my day!

Anonymous October 6. 2007 07:18

thanks a lot
looks nice and clean

Anonymous October 6. 2007 07:18

Thanks... this is very neat!

Muzzy October 17. 2007 04:48

Brilliant! Thank you so much.

Cheers~

kimlanbu January 23. 2008 08:13

Thanks a lot, it worked

motomart April 22. 2008 11:06

hey, it seems like it's not working with SP1... ?
Anyone else has problems using it with SP1 ???

Bryan Peters April 22. 2008 12:30

For Vista, you'll need to run the command in elevated-mode.

Easiest way is hit the Windows button and type in "cmd" in the search. Right-click the icon and select Run as Administrator. Then right-click the command prompt and paste the command.

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