I have run WMP for eons! From XP right on up through all the versions and have never had a problem like this. Running the Troubleshooter doesn't fix it to the point it prevents it from breaking it again. I end up having to uninstall it and reinstall it to get it working again. I constantly keep getting the popup box that says 'server execution failed'. The problem is that WMP keeps 'breaking'! I choose a file, and then away goes nothing. I keep all the files about the same audio level so that whenever our sound man plays them at church, we can rely on the files not being overly loud or too soft. With it set up like that, I can play any file I have and get a good estimate at how loud the file is. I have it set up so it shows the 'bars' under the Visualizations/Bars and Waves option. I know there are other players, such as VLC which I use a lot, but I use WMP extensively for playing my gospel music files. I have a different Windows Media Player problem.