Vista version Media Player 11 won't start up.

I bought this Dell laptop just 2 months ago that came with windows Vista and Windows Media Player 11 pre-installed. It was working fine until yesterday morning. But it has stopped working at all suddenly. No matter I try playing anything from the library or by double clicking any media files in Windows Explorer, nothing happens.

Later somebody suggested me to re-install WMP hoping it could fix the problem. But when I go to Add and Remove program, I dint find WMP listed over there. So it can’t remove it as well.

Can anyone here please suggest me something to get rid of this issue?

Even I am facing a similar problem with brand new Vista Home Premium system I bought a week ago for £200. Now my Media Center is not able to play anything on it. At the time of purchase I have been told that I can contact Microsoft via mail without any problem. Well I send a mail 3 days ago regarding this problem and its been 72 hours I haven’t received any reply from them whereas they claim to respond within 24 hours. So I thought to put my problem here. Hope anyone can help me fixing it.

Ohh, finally after 5 days of sending the mail I got a reply from Microsoft but that also doesn’t seems to be working as they say to restore my system to previous point. But as this is new computer and due to some reason I don’t have any System Restore Point on my system.

Here is the complete message I received from Microsoft:

"I am not sure what causes the problem with Windows Media Player but at the moment there is no update available for the Media Player of Windows Vista and the Media Player designed for Windows XP cannot be installed on Windows Vista. Because the Media Player is part of the basic installation there is also no option to remove it from Control Panel > Programs or to run a standalone re-installation of the Media Player.

I think the easiest way to solve your problem is using System Restore to restore your system to a date where Windows Media Player was still working without problems. To do so please go to Start-menu > Search-bar > type in RESTORE and press Enter on your keyboard. This will open the System Restore program where you can select a restore point after clicking on Next. Please select a date before the 24th February to get the system repaired. If you have installed additional applications after the 24th February it will be necessary to reinstall the software of course."

So as I said I don’t have any restore point, I even dint installed any software. So conclusion is there is no solution for this issue so far.

Hello Theo-Dore,

Though the mail dint worked for you but it helped me manage to fix the problem. Fortunately I had a restore point created a month ago. I just did a system restore and now I can play the media files properly without any problem or error. By restoring the system I lost Sony Sound Forge 8 application which I guess the problem started after installing this itself.

Thank you for sharing your mail.