How to Get Windows Media Player 11 to Open in the Now Playing Menu Instead of Library.

by drewdoog

16K66

Intro: How to Get Windows Media Player 11 to Open in the Now Playing Menu Instead of Library.

One of the worst parts about WMP11 is that every time you run the program, its default is to open in the Library, instead of the Now Playing window. Microsoft decided that people shouldn't have the ability to set it to open in a certain window, so this tutorial shows you how to do it. (and its so much easier then you would think)

STEP 1: Create Desktop Shortcut

Click the start menu
click COMPUTER or MY COMPUTER
select your harddrive
Click Program Files
Click WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER
When it opens, locate the wmplayer.exe file
Right click it and create a desktop shortcut

STEP 2: Enter the Command

Now that you have a wmplayer.exe shortcut on your desktop, right click it
select the Shortcut tab
You will see the Target of the shortcut
place your cursor after the ....exe" and type
/prefetch:1 /Task NowPlaying
(there is a space between the exe" and /prefetch and inbetween prefetch:1 and /task)
Click OK
Click the shortcut and watch it open in the correct window.

6 Comments

varadipeter 12 years ago

Thank you very much for sharing this info!

drewdoog 16 years ago

i know i wasnt the only one that hated this worthless 'feature', so at least some people out there now know that they can tell the program to do what you want it to do, and not the other way around.

djcalamari 16 years ago

I really hated this feature of WMP11, I even uninstalled it for this very reason. Your simple Instructable was very useful to me... Thanks!

nnygamer 16 years ago

Thanks, I've been wondering how to do that!

GorillazMiko 16 years ago

Great Instructable. Never knew how to do this, could help a lot of people (including me, but I use Winamp instead now). Great job!