Is Windows Media Player causing popups?

May 2, 2006 9:06 PM

How do I stop popups that appear when Windows Media Player is running?

I do not in general have a popup problem. The only time I get popups is when Windows Media Player is playing a feed off the web, or if it is playing an embedded video in a web page. I do not get popups at any other time. (I have Quicktime set up to play, in Firefox, almost all video streams it can; I only use Windows Media for wmv and so forth)

In the Security tab, I see a setting that may be relevant called "Do not run script commands and rich media streams if the player is running inside a web page" that is checked. Windows XP automatic updates is enabled and up-to-date.

I use Firefox 1.5.0.3, I scan for spyware/popups regularly with Windows Defender, Ad-Aware, and Ewido. Running version 10 of Windows Media.

posted by Brian James to computers & internet (6 comments total)

You could switch to Media Player Classic, which is much nicer, IMO. It won't play DRM-protected streams, however.
posted by neckro23 at 9:26 PM on May 2, 2006

Can you give an example of a URL / page that causes the popups to appear in Windows Media Player? It might be some sort of spyware.
posted by helios at 11:06 PM on May 2, 2006

I believe that the automatic license acquisition feature can be abused to cause pop-ups. You may want to uncheck "Acquire licenses automatically for protected content" under the privacy tab, if you haven't already.
posted by Turd Ferguson at 9:25 AM on May 3, 2006

You may want to run Spybot Search & Destroy or similar to fix the underlying problem, rather than switching to a different player.
posted by soundslikeobiwan at 10:28 AM on May 3, 2006

Oops - I see you are running some scanning software, bad concentration skills on my part. Try running Spybot anyway, works better for me.
posted by soundslikeobiwan at 10:29 AM on May 3, 2006

I'm a little late, but here is a link to a video that makes a popup.

Curiously, the popup appears in an IE mini-window, not a Firefox one (though FireFox is set as my default browser), and displays this image.
posted by Brian James at 11:22 AM on May 3, 2006