Remove Windows Media Player context menu entries

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By Howard | Published December 19, 2007

I use Winamp to play mp3s.  I always have done – it’s lightweight, I like the interface and it has the few plugins I need.  I don’t need the bloat of iTunes or Windows Media Player.  However, I seem to have Windows Media Player installed – I don’t remember installing it, and I probably wouldn’t have noticed it was there were it not for the plethora of context menu items it installs.

All I wanted to do was right-click a selection of mp3s and then queue them in the Winamp playlist.  That’s when I noticed a load of entries like “sync to device”, “burn”, “add to library”.  Turns out Media Player had hooked into the shell.  Thankfully, there is a way to get rid of this integration (which added a delay of several seconds to my right-click!).

Here’s the fix, click Start, Run and type:

regsvr32 /u wmpshell.dll

Horrah – a much cleaner context menu.  I wonder if there is any software to allow you to remove specific entries from that list?

Categories: Microsoft, Software

Tags: , ,

17 Responses to "Remove Windows Media Player context menu entries"

  1. hakd Posted January 18, 2008 at 10:04 am

    thx alot..

    i hate WMA.. winamp 4ever xD

  2. Bob Sauber Posted February 14, 2008 at 9:03 am

    Thank you. It works. Just another steptowards cleaner windows

  3. Michael Posted March 20, 2008 at 9:11 am

    Thanks a bunch. Just what I was looking for, a quick fix to get WMP out of my context menu.

  4. Sokonomi Posted June 27, 2008 at 1:05 pm

    Didnt work for me. Vista 64 ultimate.

  5. Howard Posted July 1, 2008 at 7:37 pm

    @Sokonomi:

    I was doing this on Windows XP SP2 – I’m sure Media Player integration is very different under Vista.

  6. Joolee Posted July 5, 2008 at 10:11 am

    You can do that with contextedit
    http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/OS-Enhancements/ContextEdit.shtml

  7. Howard Posted July 10, 2008 at 1:17 pm

    Excellent! Thanks Joolee, just what I was looking for.

  8. Paolo Posted July 28, 2008 at 7:19 pm

    Thank you soooo much for this. Quick, easy and effective! Great!

  9. Roger Posted October 25, 2008 at 8:17 pm

    Thx!! Works for me (vista64 ultimate)

  10. Manuel Posted October 27, 2008 at 8:41 pm

    great, i had exactly your problem, thx.
    works on vista x64

  11. greg0ire Posted November 15, 2008 at 8:02 pm

    thanks a bunch. worked for me with vista x64. Winamp rules!!

  12. magoo Posted November 28, 2008 at 4:24 pm

    thanks dude! that command works like a charm on vista business sp1.

  13. nka Posted December 2, 2008 at 10:34 pm

    Thanks for the quick fix. Much appreciated.

  14. Matt Posted February 6, 2009 at 3:05 am

    Thanks a lot!

  15. Brandon Posted February 14, 2009 at 1:31 am

    How do I get it back? I only wanted to et rid of the “burn” and “add to playlist” options.

  16. Kohloe Posted March 12, 2009 at 1:47 pm

    THANKS!
    works with Vista Ultimate 64

  17. Olivier Posted May 27, 2009 at 10:03 pm

    Thanks a bunch!

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