WMP w/o Desktop Experience?

[Psychor]

Hi,

Is there any way to install WMP without having to install the Desktop Experience package in Server 2008 (64 bit)? I need access to WMA lossless which evidently you can only gain access to by installing WMP. However I don’t want to have to install all of the unnecessary applications that are packaged within Desktop Experience.

Thanks.

[Arris]

After some trying I found a working method, but you can find out yourself how to get more clean.

1. Download Windows Media Player 11 for Windows XP.
x86: wmp11-windowsxp-x86-enu.exe
x64: wmp11-windowsxp-x64-enu.exe
2. Extract the wmp11-windowsxp-x*-enu.exe with for example 7zip of WinRAR.
3. From the extracted folder extract the files wmfdist11-*.exe and wmp11*.exe into the same folder (C:Program FilesWindows Media Player) overwriting every existing file. (we don’t need these files though)
4. Open the commandprompt and execute the following command to register all dll files from the Windows Media Player directory (kind of brute force attack ):

for /F "delims=*" %i in ('dir /b /s "C:Program FilesWindows Media Player*.dll"') do regsvr32 /s "%i"

5. Start Windows Media Player by running C:Program FilesWindows Media Playerwmplayer.exe!

Tested this in a virtual Windows Server 2008 x64, but I guess this will work for x86 too! :geek:

Good luck! 😉

[Psychor]

Hi Arris,

I’m running the 64 bit version of Server 2008 Enterprise w/o Desktop Experience installed.

I extracted wmfdist11-*.exe and wmp11*.exe as you suggested. I first extracted wmfdist11-*.exe and then wmp11*.exe. wmp11*.exe asked whether I wanted to overwrite existing files from wmfdist11-*.exe. I said yes. I then ran the command line parameters you supplied – it ran through registering all the DLLs. I then ran wmplayer.exe.

WMP loaded, detected media and allowed me to configure options but I could not play audio or video files. If I tried to play a loaded video or audio file WMP would eventually crash.

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated! For now I’ve installed Desktop Experience to get it working. Thanks.

[Arris]

Hm just tried and you are right. After monitoring with Sysinternals Process Monitor I found out that wmplayer.exe was looking mf.dll before it crashes. After copying mf.dll from Windows Server 2008 including Desktop Experience to the Windows Media Player folder it turns out that if you want to execute regsvr32.exe mf.dll you also need mfplat.dll to register mf.dll succesfully, however after copying that file and registering it still crashes while looking for some WMI registry key. Try it yourself with Sysinternals Process Explorer and set as filter Process Name | is | wmplayer.exe | Include. Start monitoring just before you open some media file via the open item in the file menu!

[aviv00]

u could do with it vlite to make ur pre-install iso

[Psychor]

Thanks for the help Arris!

[Day2Die]

@Arris wrote:

Hm just tried and you are right. After monitoring with Process Explorer I found out that wmplayer.exe was looking mf.dll before it crashes. After copying mf.dll from Windows Server 2008 including Desktop Experience to the Windows Media Player folder it turns out that if you want to execute regsvr32.exe mf.dll you also need mfplat.dll to register mf.dll succesfully, however after copying that file and registering it still crashes while looking for some WMI registry key. Try it yourself with Sysinternals Process Explorer and set as filter Process Name | is | wmplayer.exe | Include. Start monitoring just before you open some media file via the open item in the file menu!

Arris, I think you are talking about Process Monitor rather than Process Explorer.

[sawo]

Even if you install desktop experience, all of its features are disabled by default, so i think you aren’t going to face any slow downs in performance, if that concerns you.

[Arris]

@Day2Die wrote:

Arris, I think you are talking about Process Monitor rather than Process Explorer.

You are right! 😉 Updated my reply. 🙂

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