Windows – How to set “64-bit” Windows Media Player as the default media player

64-bitwindowswindows 8windows media player

I'm using 64-bit version of Windows 8.1 Pro. It always run the 32-bit version of Windows Media Player.

32-bit wmp process

How can I set the 64-bit version as the default player or whenever I chose to open music files with WMP?
I manually set the location of 64-bit wmplayer.exe as default program of music file types. It doesn't work.

I have also tried modifying the registry setting of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\wmplayer.exe

Which is suggested here. But, still no luck, any ideas?

Best Answer

Instructions for Windows 7 are here. It's likely that these will be the same for Windows 8.1

Note that it's generally not recommended to switch to the 64-bit version. You will lose compatibility with 32-bit codecs and plug-ins. And there's no noticeable improvement when using the 64-bit version.

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