Windows Media Player Crashes Playing MP4 Files (Solved)
Posted by Dexter Nelson: Friday, July 5, 2013 (2:15 PM)

Windows Media Player Crashes Playing MP4 Files (Solved)

This started happening a few months ago when I upgraded an old computer that I haven't used in a really long time to a Windows 7 from Windows XP. The graphics card is NVIDIA GeForce 6200 and for a while it worked just fine.

Then I upgraded the old 2009 driver to the 2013 driver and from that moment on, windows media player crashes whenever I play HD files, specifically HD MP4 files.

I was content to install VLC or KM Player and use that, but the problem persisted whenever I converted video files or did screen captures for my business and I had to solve the problem, however everything I found on the web didn't fix it.

Codecs were fine, windows media wasn't corrupted, all of my drivers were up to date, so I decided to get test everything one by one and I've solved the problem and I want to share the solution with everyone else, hoping that this will solve their problem as well.

Windows Media Player Crashes Playing MP4 Files (Solved)

After several tests and crashes and reboots this is what what did the trick.

1. Uninstall all of your codecs (then reboot)
2. Download and install Shark's Windows 7 and 8 Advanced Codecs.
3. When you install them, all of your codecs will be reset to their default installation settings.
4. If you have it, right-click on any open space on your desktop and open the NVIDIA Control Panel.
5. Once open, reset all of your settings to default, then exit.
6. This is important: Close Shark's Settings Application, then re-open it by right-clicking on the program and selecting "run as Administrator".
7. After it's opened, browse to the MPG~MP4 tab, and on the right, under MP4 Playback, check the "disable Media Foundation" box, then exit the application and reboot.
8. Optionally, you can check the Shark007 SUGGESTED settings box too, just make sure that the disable Media Foundation box stays checked.
   
    

After rebooting trying playing HD or MP4 files in windows media player and it should work just fine.

According to Microsoft, Media Foundation enables the development of applications and components for using digital media on Windows Vista and later. It's also COM-based and causes a lot of problems.

I hope this works for you as well as it did for me.

If it did, please leave a comment (moderated) and let me know. I'd like to hear if it helped.

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Dexter "TechDex" Nelson
http://www.techdex.net/