Windows Media Player 12 Software for Vista

Windows Media Player 12 is the microsoft windows media player to be bundled with Windows 7. We earlier reviewed the features of Windows Media Player 12 and found that this version of the microsoft media player software had some awesome new features, which would definitely make it a complete media player for windows.

Microsoft is planning to release Windows 7 toward the end of 2009. Recently they released the beta versions of Windows 7 and it had WMP 12 bundled with it. One of deviantART users, bogo-d, had developed a skin to make Windows Media Player 11 look like Windows Media Player 12 in windows vista. Let us now see how we can install the windows media player 12 skin on Vista.

Microsoft Windows Media Player 12 (WMP12) skin for vista:

Before installing, note that this skin requires Windows Vista (32 bit) and installing this skin requires you to change system files and registry entries.Doing this incorrectly may cause Windows or some of its components to stop functioning properly.

Free download Windows Media Player 12 skin from here

Find below the steps to install it:

• If Windows Media Player is running, close it
• Take ownership of wmploc.dll. To do this, Go to X:\Windows\System32 where X is the drive letter for the partition where Windows Vista is installed
• Right-click wmploc.dll and choose Properties
• In the Properties window, select the Security tab and press Advanced
• Select the Owner tab and press on Edit. If an UAC prompt appears, choose Continue
• Select Administrators from the list and press OK on all remaining Properties windows
• Right click wmploc.dll again and select Properties
• In the Properties window, select the Security tab and press Advanced
• Press Edit. If an UAC prompt appears, choose Continue
• Select Administrators from the list and press Edit
• Check the box next to Full Control under Allow
• Press OK on all remaining Properties windows
• Rename wmploc.dll to wmploc.dll.bak and back it up in a safe location
• Copy the downloaded wmploc.dll from the zip archive to the X:\Windows\System32 folder
• Copy settings.reg and restore.reg files to any folder you want
• Run settings.reg and press OK. settings.reg can be deleted now
• Do not delete restore.reg as you will need it if you plan to uninstall

Find below the steps to uninstall the above WMP 12 Skin, in case you want to revert back to Windows Media player 11:

• If Windows Media Player is running, close it
• Delete X:\Windows\System32\wmploc.dll
• Rename wmploc.dll.bak, backed up earlier, to wmploc.dll
• Run restore.reg from where you saved it

If you want to restore wmploc.dll’s original ownership and permissions:

• Right-click wmploc.dll and choose Properties
• In the Properties window, select the Security tab and press Advanced
• Press Edit. If an UAC prompt appears, choose Continue
• Select Administrators from the list and press Edit
• Press Clear All
• Check only Traverse folder/execute file, Read folder/read data, Read attributes, Read extended attributes and Read permissions and press OK
• Press OK
• Select the Owner tab
• Press Edit. If an UAC prompt appears, choose Continue
• Press Other users or groups…
• Under “Enter the object name to select”, type ‘NT SERVICE\TrustedInstaller‘ (without quotes)
• Press OK on all remaining Properties windows

That is all folks !!!



From the above installation steps, it is clear that you will need to take ownership of wmploc.dll and windows Media Player folder on your vista installation, to copy the extracted files (replacing the current file and folder), as mentioned above. If you are not aware of how to take ownership of files in vista, you could use the free Winbubble to tweak vista and take ownership of files and folders.

Enjoy Windows Media Player 12 on windows Vista !!!

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2. Free Windows Media Player 12 Skins For Windows 7, vista
3. Windows Media Player 11 – How to upgrade to WMP 11
4. Windows Media Player 12
5. Download Windows Media Player 11 (WMP 11)
6. Features of Windows Media Player 12
7. How To Uninstall Windows Media Player 11
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