How can I troubleshoot Windows Media Player being unable to play videos?

Posted by Billy ONeal on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Billy ONeal
Published on 2012-03-30T03:29:22Z Indexed on 2012/03/30 5:34 UTC
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Windows

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windows-media-player

I have a Windows Media Player installation which is behaving strangely. I know I have the correct codecs installed for a piece of video,

because it is Windows Media Video
because the Zune software plays it just fine
this is a recent problem; this type of video played just fine a week ago, but I have been unable to isolate the change that borked things (and I have System Restore disabled because the space on this SSD is cramped as it is)

When I try to view any video in Windows Media Player, the video does not play, and I just get this:

blank WMP window

and none of the media buttons have any effect.

I have already tried the following:

Uninstalling and reinstalling the KLite Codec Pack
Uninstalling and reinstalling Windows Media Player via "Add or Remove Windows Features"
Removing and allowing WMP to rebuild it's media library by erasing the %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows Media directory.
sfc /scannow

How can I troubleshoot this problem?

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