Comments on: Is Windows Media Player causing popups?

Question: Is Windows Media Player causing popups?

Brian James — Tue, 02 May 2006 21:06:42 -0800

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.

By: neckro23

neckro23 — Tue, 02 May 2006 21:26:39 -0800

You could switch to Media Player Classic, which is much nicer, IMO. It won't play DRM-protected streams, however.

By: helios

helios — Tue, 02 May 2006 23:06:44 -0800

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.

By: Turd Ferguson

Turd Ferguson — Wed, 03 May 2006 09:25:22 -0800

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.

By: soundslikeobiwan

soundslikeobiwan — Wed, 03 May 2006 10:28:14 -0800

You may want to run Spybot Search & Destroy or similar to fix the underlying problem, rather than switching to a different player.

By: soundslikeobiwan

soundslikeobiwan — Wed, 03 May 2006 10:29:46 -0800

Oops - I see you are running some scanning software, bad concentration skills on my part. Try running Spybot anyway, works better for me.

By: Brian James

Brian James — Wed, 03 May 2006 11:22:11 -0800

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.