I usually listen to my MP3 collection using SysTrayPlay (STP) music player. I like the fact that it stays out of the way in my system tray and lets me control most operations by global hotkeys. If I need to pause the music, I just hit CTRL-0 or any other combination I’ve chosen.

Occasionally, I like to listen to music using Windows Media Player (WMP). It’s not the greatest player, but it’s already installed and I like the SRS bass boost. The only problem is that it doesn’t have global hotkeys. When WMP is minimized, there’s no way to pause, control volume, skip songs or any other function.

I got tired of this and I went out for a google search. After a few false leads, I finally found what I was looking for. There’s a great solution at SourceForge.net named WMP Keys‘.

WMP Keys is a plugin for Windows Media Player that gives you global hotkeys for the following:

• Play/Pause         Ctrl+Alt+Home
• Next                     Ctrl+Alt+Right
• Previous             Ctrl+Alt+Left
• Volume Up           Ctrl+Alt+Up
• Volume Down       Ctrl+Alt+Down
• Fast Forward     Ctrl+Alt+F
• Fast Backward   Ctrl+Alt+B
• Rate [1-5]         Ctrl+Alt+[1-5]

WMP Keys is easy to use and manage. Download and install it. The next time you open up Windows Media Player, open up the Tools menu, choose Options and the Plugins tab. Find the Backgrounds category and enable the Wmpkeys plugin with a check in it’s check-box.

At this point, you can choose the Properties button to change any of the hotkeys that are assigned to the Media Player functions.

These hotkeys work. It’s that simple.

Download WMP Keys

via [ghacks]

Would you like to see some of the other cool things you can do with Windows Media Player? Check out these links.

• How to Uninstall Windows Media Player 11

• Play Real Media Files in Windows Media Player

• Play FLV Files In Windows Media Player

• How To Play QuickTime Files In Windows Media Player?

• How To Play Any Video File In Windows Media Player?

Techie Buzz Verdict:

WMP Keys is small, free and open source. It solves what I considered to be a big problem. I’d like to see the plugin expanded to include more functions, but it’s fine the way it is now. I can recommend it to anyone who still loves to play their music in Windows Media Player.

Techie Buzz Rating: 4.5/5 (Excellent)

If you have used past versions of Windows, you are probably familiar with the Windows Media Player taskbar toolbar (or taskband). The taskbar toolbar used to be triggered whenever Media Player was minimized and provided a quick and convenient way to control playback. Unfortunately, this feature was dumped in Windows Media Player 12, which ships with Windows 7. However, Justin from WinMatrix has found a way to enable Windows Media Player toolbar even in Windows 7.

• You will first need to get a copy of the %programfiles%\Windows Media Player\wmpband.dll file from a WMP 11 installation. You can obtain it from your friend’s system or you can use the download links provided at the end of this post. Remember that you must copy from a system with the same OS architecture (i.e. 32 bit or 64 bit).
• Paste this file in the %programfiles%\Windows Media Player directory.
• Type services.msc in the Start Menu and hit Enter. Ensure that Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service is stopped.
• Start command prompt as administrator by typing cmd in the Start Menu and pressing Ctrl+Shift+Enter.
• Type regsvr32 “%programfiles%\Windows Media Player\wmpband.dll” and press Enter.
• Restart the Windows Media Player Network Sharing service (if you had stopped it earlier on).



• Run Windows Media Player and minimize it. Right click on an empty spot in the taskbar and select Toolbars –> Windows Media Player. Ignore the warning and you should get the Windows Media Player taskbar toolbar.

Windows Media Player is the default media player in Windows. Sometimes you may come across issues with the player which may not allow you to play audio or video files due to corrupted dll (Dynamic Linking Library) files.

Fix WMP is a handy freeware which will re-register all the dll files associated with Windows Media player to fix any issues it has.

There are 40 dll files associated with WMP which can be easily fixed with FixWMP. FixWMP is a portable software, so you don’t need to install it. Fix WMP works on Windows 7 and Windows Vista Windows Media Player.

Download FixWMP

Though there are Standalone Flash Players and Desktop FLV (Flash Video) Player, there are many chances that you may not want to use separate players to watch different types of videos. If your favorite video player is Windows Media Player, there are always tools that will allow you to play unsupported formats in it.

Like the plugin to play Real media files in WMP, a plugin to play Quicktime videos in WMP or codecs that support playing virtually any video in Windows Media Player.

Likewise if you are looking to play FLV files in Windows Media Player, a Freeware plugin called PlayFLV enables Windows Media Player to play FLV files.

PlayFLV Features

• Plugin that enables Windows Media Player to playback FLV files
• Features all default functions, such as zooming, skipping and full screen view
• Creates file association: Double-click FLV files to play them in Windows Media Player
• Very lightweight plugin
• Free and open source

Download PlayFLV

By default Windows 7 has Windows Media Player 12 as the default media player, if you are not happy with the performance of the Media player, you can easily downgrade the Windows Media Player 12 to WMP 11.

Though the method is not straightforward and you will need to perform a hack uninstall of WMP 12. There are several steps you will need to follow to do this.

Step 1: Download Windows Media Player 11 Installer for Windows 7 (Update: January 31, 2012 – Link updated)

Step 2: Type services.msc in Windows 7 search bar and open the services application.

Step 3: Find the Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service and Stop it.

Step 4: You will need to take Ownership of several files which include:

1. All files in Program Files\Windows Media Player\ folder
2. All files starting with wmp in System32 folder
3. wmploc.dll.mui in Sytem32\en-us\ folder

Step 5: Run the Windows Media Player 11 Installer you had downloaded earlier.

Step 6: Type Regedit in Windows 7 search bar and open the registry editor application.

Step 7: Delete following Registry key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\Setup\Installed Versions

Step 8: Reboot your Windows 7 for the changes to take effect.

That’s it, with these steps you will be able to downgrade WMP 12 and use WMP 11 instead. Want to share any Windows 7 tips? Feel free to contact us with your tips.

Hacks n Mods Tip From BlogsDNA

One of our readers Shadow sent us a query which asked us:

How do you change files from Quick Time media player to Windows media player? My friend just uploaded a slipknot album, the only problem is, I have windows and he has quick time. So I can’t listen to it.

Well this is a common problem faced by many people, since they do not have the Quick Time player provided by Apple. There is a simple solution though that will allow you to play quick time audio and video files in windows media player.

Related: How to Play Real Media Files (.rm, .rmvb, etc) in Windows Media Player

Playing QuickTime Files in Windows Media Player

If you do not want to install QuickTime player from Apple, there is a alternative which will allow you to view QuickTime files like (3gp, qt, etc) in Windows Media player. The alternative would involve installing the K-Lite Codec package, which installs the required codecs to play QuickTime files in Windows Media Player.

To learn more and download about K-Lite Codec package, you can take a look at our earlier post where we told you How To play any file format in Windows Media Player.

Quick Time Alternative

If you would not mind installing a additional player on your PC, QuickTime Alternative is a lightweight player that will allow you to play all the QuickTime files.

QuickTime Alternative is basically a trimmed down version of QuickTime that contains only the essential components needed for playing QuickTime content that is embedded in webpages.

Download QuickTime Alternative

Hope this solves your problem Shadow and do enjoy the music.

This post is part of the user recommendation series where users recommend question to us.

Our reader Jerome asks us Hey Techie, I have been reading you for quite some time and wanted to ask this question. I love Windows Media Player but it does not play all the files I download saying that some codec is being downloaded, some of the videos only have sounds but no video at all. I did try VLC player but do not like the interface and would like to play all the files in Windows Media Player, can you tell me know I can do it?

Well Jerome, like you we too have been using Windows Media player for quite some time, in the past we have also shown how to play real media files in Windows Media Player, but there are several other files which do not play in Windows Media Player, even though they are supposedto play in Windows Media player.

The core problem for not being able to play a supported file in Windows Media Player lies in the fact that several manufacturers use different codecs for the same file format, so even though .AVI files may be supported by Windows Media Player it may not play the file because of the encoding used while creating it. You can get over the problem by downloading the required codec from the manufacturer.

A codec is a device or program capable of encoding and/or decoding a digital data stream or signal. The word codec may be a combination of any of the following: ‘compressor-decompressor’, ‘coder-decoder’, or ‘compression/decompression algorithm’. Wikipedia

Finding and downloading missing codecs can be hard if not a waste of time. And with the amount of codecs actively used in producing videos, you may require several of them.

To solve the problem of playing any file in Windows Media Player, you can download K-Lite Codec Pack, which is like a collection of almost every codec available today. Once you have installed K-Lite Codec pack you can play almost any file types in Windows Media Player including real media, 3GP files, Quick time movies, Mp4 files, DivX files, HDTV files and more.

K-Lite codec pack has a option to only install components you want, so you can still keep playing the media you want  in your favorite player.

There are three versions of the K-Lite Codec Pack: Basic, Standard and Full.

• K-Lite Codec Pack Basic contains only the most essential things. It contains everything you need to be able to play the most popular and widespread formats. It is small enough to fit on a single floppy. Also great for including on your movie CDs.
• K-Lite Codec Pack Standard contains everything you need to play all the commonly used formats. This package should be enough for the average user.
• K-Lite Codec Pack Full contains even more codecs. It also has encoding support for the various formats. This package is for power users and people who do their own encodings.

Download K-Lite Codec Pack

Hope this solves your problem Jerome. If our readers want to ask us questions or recommend something to us, feel free to contact us.