Win7 and WMP removal

[o770]

Hello. Are there any known drawbacks from uninstalling Windows Media Player? Thanks!

[Keiyakusha]

I do this since Win7RC. there was no problems so far.

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Hello. Are there any known drawbacks from uninstalling Windows Media Player? Thanks!

AFAIK it only uninstalls 'Windows Media Player' as a front-end. The WMP engine and all the Codecs remain, as other Apps my rely on them...

(Same with 'uninstalling' IExlore)

[Keiyakusha]

Codecs remain, yes. Things like DTV Video Decoder doesn't counts as part of the WMP. This is good imho. As for engine... if its remains, its not used anywhere. I don't remember if I removed wmp's folder manually after uninstall, but since I can't find it in program files - probably yes. Still no problems detected.

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Codecs remain, yes. This is good imho. As for engine... if its remains, its not used anywhere. I don't remember if I removed wmp's folder manually after uninstall, but since I can't find it in program files - probably yes. Still no problems detected.

Well, I assume the "WMP.dll" and its friends in your System folder remain, as otherwise that would break compatibility that rely on the WMP engine.

[Keiyakusha]

Can you point what else is using wmp's engine? Maybe I just not using it right now...
EDIT: ohh, if you mean files located in C:\Windows\winsxs, I didn't removed these... don't see any reasons in doing so...

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Can you point what else is using wmp's engine?

Just think of the WMP Browser Plugin, which isn't only available for IE but also as NPAPI-compatible Plugin for Firefox and friends.

And yes, while Flash Player is dominating everywhere nowadays, there still are some web-sites that stream videos exclusively via WMP Plugin.

Another example would be the "Multimedia Player" that is part of IrfanView:

http://img801.imageshack.us/img801/3034/irfanviewmultimediaplay.th.jpg (http://img801.imageshack.us/img801/3034/irfanviewmultimediaplay.jpg)

Yet another (and probably more "prominent") example is the Media Player in Valve's Steam platform:

http://img818.imageshack.us/img818/7835/steammediaplayer2010091.th.jpg (http://img818.imageshack.us/img818/7835/steammediaplayer2010091.jpg)

It probably wouldn't be too hard to find more examples...


EDIT: ohh, if you mean files located in C:\Windows\winsxs, I didn't removed these... don't see any reasons in doing so...

Actually I was referring to WMP.dll in "C:\Windows\System32", which is used by the aforementioned applications (as can be checked with ProcessExplorer easily). But it's quite possible that Windows stores several copies of that DLL in it's "WinSxS" folder structure in order to feed every application with the desired version of the "WMP.dll" library.

[Justin101]

I think there is no drawbacks, key point is that whether you like or not, if you lik Windows Media Player,you just use it
and you unlike it , you change another one.