Windows Media Player 11 Download

Martin Brinkmann
Oct 31, 2006
Updated • May 14, 2013
Music and Video
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28

Yesterday Microsoft released the new Windows media player 11 silently on its Internet website. You can download the (final) version of Media Player at the official Media Player homepage. This version is only usable with Windows XP and not previous versions of the operating system, so keep that in mind before you head over and start to download the program to your system. Guidelines for common actions like installing the player, codec information and playing / burning files can be found on the faq page of Media Player 11.

Please note that Microsoft might check for WGA (Windows genuine advantage) before you are able to download the file from the official website. Try this download if you want to avoid the check. I have not installed it at my home computer, there could be a second check during the installation of the tool.

If you run into troubles you can take a look at the readme for Windows Media Player 11 for XP which contains a large list of known issues. (lots of synchronizing errors, playback errors and the like). I would not rely on Media Player but suggest you take a look at incredible alternatives that are faster and better, VLC comes to my mind.

Update:  Windows Media Player 11 is still available on the linked website for Windows XP users who can't use the latest version of the player as it is no longer compatible with the operating system. It needs to be noted that Windows Media Player 12 is only available for Windows 7, and that the software ships with the operating system by default. Windows 7 users therefore do not need to download the latest version of the player anymore.

What's however available for WMP 12 are skin, plug-in and visualizations that one can download from the Microsoft website for the media player. It is also interesting that the next version of Windows Media Player, the one shipping with Windows 8, won't support DVD playback anymore like version 12 does.

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Comments

  1. Anonymous said on August 1, 2010 at 12:43 pm
    Reply

    Why not make use of the mplayer.conf?

  2. Mike J said on August 1, 2010 at 2:58 pm
    Reply

    Huh, I have never even seen this “font cache” pane; videos play at once for me, using VLC & XP SP3.

    1. Martin said on August 1, 2010 at 3:39 pm
      Reply

      Mike, in theory this should have only been displayed once to you, at the very first video that you played with VLC. The time this window is displayed depends largely on the number of fonts in your font directory.

      1. Mike J said on August 2, 2010 at 2:30 pm
        Reply

        huh, I lucked out for a change?? Amazing!!
        Apparently VLC keeps this info through version updates, but I didn’t see this message after a fresh OS install about 8 weeks ago, & a new VLC.

  3. myo said on August 1, 2010 at 5:52 pm
    Reply

    yes, yes, i have the same problem. sometimes, VLC crashes when it is playing .mov file.

  4. Kishore said on August 13, 2010 at 2:55 pm
    Reply

    Error:
    Buidling font Cache pop-up

    Solution:

    Open VLC player.

    On Menu Bar:

    Tools
    Preferences

    (at bottom – left side)
    Show settings — ALL

    Open: Video
    Click: Subtitles/OSD (This is now highlited, not opened)
    Text rendering module – change this to “Dummy font renderer function”

    Save
    Exit

    Re-open – done.
    Progam will no longer look outside self for fonts

    Source – WorthyTricks.co.cc

    1. Martin said on August 13, 2010 at 3:10 pm
      Reply

      Great tip, thanks a lot Kishore.

  5. javier said on August 14, 2010 at 1:50 pm
    Reply

    @Kishore, I’ll try your tips, but does this mean it will no longer show subtitles either?
    I do use subtitles, but the fontcache dialog box pops up (almost) everytime I play a file.

    Could this be related to the fonts I have installed? Or if I add/remove fonts to my system?

    I’ll try to do a fresh install also, if your tips does no work. I’ll post back here later…

    /thanks
    /j

  6. Kishore said on August 15, 2010 at 12:38 pm
    Reply

    @ Javier, The trick i posted will show up subtitles too. If not,

  7. Kishore said on August 15, 2010 at 12:39 pm
    Reply

    @ Javier, The trick i posted will show up subtitles too. If not,Dont worry, VLC is currently sorting out this issue and the next version will be out soon.

    No probs @ Martin !! Its my pleasure

  8. Ted said on October 22, 2010 at 3:57 am
    Reply

    Try running LC with administrator privileges. That seemed to fix it for me

  9. Evan said on December 8, 2013 at 1:48 am
    Reply

    I am using SMplayer 0.8.6 (64-bit) (Portable Edition) on Windows 7 x64. Even with the -nofontconfig parameter in place SMplayer still scans the fonts. Also, I have enabled normal subtitles and it is still scanning fonts before playing a video. Also, it does this every time the player opens a video after a system restart (only the fist video played).

  10. Mike Williams said on September 6, 2023 at 1:26 pm
    Reply

    Does that mean that only instrumental versions of songs will be available for non-paying users?

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