Windows Media Play 9 Problem

One day my WMP was doing just fine. It played music and videos. No problem. I didn't do anything to my system. Then one day it no longer played music but it played videos without sound. When I tried to play an MPG file I got this error saying that WMP cannot play the file because there is a problem with your sound device.

Well I went into Device Manager and checked all my sound devices and drivers and Device Manager said everything was working properly.

I even reinstalled WMP but still it wont play sound. But I do have sound because I get the Windows startup music everytime I boot.

Any ideas what is wrong and/or what should/can I do?

Have you recently installed any codecs? Any other programs?

Can you get any type of audio out of your system now?

I have made no changes to my system. No codecs have been installed. No applications have been installed.

I get the XP theme music when I boot up. I get all Windows sound effects like Email, and other sounds that Windows make for certain things, etc.

I can play videos but no sound.

When I try to play a sound file only it give me that message.

It appears that only WMP cannot play any sounds. I have un-installed WMP and re-installed it; I have booted several time but always the same message when I try to play sound files or videos with sound. There are no other applications running that have seized the sound devices. It's beyond me short of doing a complete new install of XP.

Perhaps there are still files/registry entries left after the uninstall so when you reinstall its not overwritting files/settings as they will be of the same version since they still exist.

What about upgrading it to 10 or 11?

sounds like your "windows audio" service is not starting