Chris's Corner

Where I talk, rant, and do mostly everything

WMP on Vista x64

One thing I have noticed about Vista x64 is that the default Windows Media Player is the 32 bit version.  Microsoft did this for compatibility reasons with codecs and such.  But some people may want to restore the 64 bit WMP in light of a x64 FFDShow being out which decodes virtually all audio/video.  Thankfully there is a relatively easy way to switch the system default WMP to x64 and back to x86.

 To switch to x64, open a command prompt as administrator and type:

%windir%\system32\unregmp2.exe /SwapTo:64

Alternatively to swap back to 32 bit go to a command prompt and type:

%windir%\system32\unregmp2.exe /SwapTo:32

 So there you have it, a relatively easy way to swap back and forth between x86 and x64 versions of Windows Media Player in Vista x64.

NOTE: It seems that this changes the OS shortcuts but it's not changing the actual file associations, I'm looking into this now.

UPDATE: There is one more step required to complete the transition to a full x64 Media Player.

Go into the registy and navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\wmplayer.exe

And set the Values as follows:

(Default) - "%ProgramFiles%\Windows Media Player\wmplayer.exe"
Path - %ProgramFiles%\Windows Media Player

Include the quotes on the value for (Default).

That's it, now you have a completely x64 Media Player experience.  Enjoy!

Posted on Oct 10 2006, 04:20 PM by Chris Holmes
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Comments

  • fnarf said:

    Would be nice to have a link to the x64 version of ffdshow, I look on sourceforge and didn't see it, only x86.

    October 10, 2006 5:32 PM
  • Chris Holmes said:

    fnarf,

    I found it in the x64 software downloads section on planetamd64.

    October 10, 2006 8:07 PM
  • tso said:

    Thanks for this precise bit of information that lead me to not find it and instead make me waste a lot of time.

    Meanwhile, go there:

    http://tirnanog.fate.jp/mirror/ffdshow/ffdshow64-rev2546.exe

    October 11, 2006 7:53 AM
  • ampspeed said:

    3Dポリゴンのテクスチャーにwmvムービーを貼り付けてみました。 なぜか64bi...

    October 11, 2006 10:27 AM
  • instant said:

    Thanks for the heads-up, the more non-32-bit the better.

    Now if only I could replace: (audiodg, windows live mail desktop, mfpmp (launched by the 64-bit of Media Player), cthelper..)

    October 12, 2006 9:45 PM
  • MikeeUSA said:

    Hi Chris, what's up. I guess this is where you hang out now. Wanted to say sup as I couldn't contact you via other means. I saw that you've started a small buisness with the other site :D, I wish you well in that.

    This week I decided to install gradm (part of the grsecurity kernel patch) on my server, after a week of tinkering with it on and off I have pretty much everything (that I know of) working correctly. Root has less rights then regular users :). Imagine a person gaining root shell and then realising that root is a third class citizen on the server. Root can't even su. :)

    October 15, 2006 8:51 PM
  • Canucky.net » Posts » HOW-TO: Switch to Windows Vista 64-bit painlessly said:

    PingBack from http://www.canucky.net/2007/03/18/how-to-switch-to-windows-vista-64-bit-painlessly.html

    March 18, 2007 11:23 PM
  • Kristan Kenney - Confessions of a Windows Vista Enthusiast said:

    If your computer is fairly new (within the last year or so), there is a good chance that you may have

    April 5, 2007 3:35 PM
  • Kristan Kenney - Confessions of a Windows Vista Enthusiast - Error said:

    PingBack from http://www.errorforum.com/microsoft-windows-vista-error/17564-kristan-kenney-confessions-windows-vista-enthusiast.html#post21938

    April 6, 2007 2:02 AM
  • Grenage said:

    Wonderful, thank you very much for this guide.  I was ready to give up.

    August 3, 2008 3:40 PM
  • Gavin said:

    Thanks for this, I was struggling to figure out why WMP would play my video files ok, but media centre wouldn't under vista home premium.  It appears that media centre defaults to a 64x version and media player to the 32x version.

    However, now that I have made the changes to get media player to open in it's 64x version it now experiences the exact same issues that I have in media centre... meaning I can't play any video files. I have installed and uninstalled various codecs with no luck and am getting a little frustrated.

    If it works fine under 32x, is there a way to force vista to use a 32x version of media centre as it's supposed to use the same codecs as the media player.

    Any help wold be appreciated as I've reached the end of my tether trying to resolve this.

    November 16, 2008 3:03 PM
  • Nic Bedford said:

    If you use:

    %windir%\system32\unregmp2.exe /SwapTo:64

    In Windows 7 beta 1 x64, and then 'Pin to taskbar' you get 2 Windows Media Player icons in the taskbar :(

    January 8, 2009 7:03 AM
  • Tombo said:

    Nic, does your last Windows 7 beta x64 thing work in Vista Ultimate x64 too?

    Thanks,

    Tom

    February 27, 2009 10:17 PM
  • Ife said:

    Chris you're AWESOME!!! I just used your explanation to correct my windows media player problem. I lost the path string, so I used what you had and now my computer knows again that it has windows media player. Dell called the problem an advanced software problem and were going to charge me $129 for that piece of code. haha! Thanks Man.

    June 24, 2009 5:04 PM
  • Bruce said:

    The problem I have is I have x64 Vista Home Premium and use Vista Media Center. VMC is 64bit and uses its own 64bit Media Player (which is not WMP x64, although I believe it uses some of the same code). The challenge I have is that I want to play lossless music files. I don't know what lossless formats VMC's Media Player can handle. It cannot play FLAC, because whilst there are 64bit codecs (such as VCP) there seems to be no standalone 64bit containers for the FLAC codec, which means single FLAC files don't work. FFDShow will work 64 bit, but only when a) the FLAC file is contained within an .MKV container i.e. it is not a single/simple FLAC file and b) with WMP (which I don't want to use, I want to use 64bit VMC's Media Player). So, does anyone know how to play lossless format in 64bit VMC's Media Player? It would seem likely that it will play WMA Lossless (but I don't know that), but file sizes are big. As I haven't ripped my CD collection to lossless format yet, I can choose whatever lossless format once I know what will work. It seems to me that being able to play a lossless format in 64 bit Vista Media Center using the VMC Media Player isn't an unreasonable desire, and one I would think many users of 64bit VMC would similarly have?

    July 12, 2009 5:58 PM
  • Nike Air Max said:

    great news to hear that.

    July 29, 2009 2:41 AM

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