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Tips/Troubleshooting

You will see tips and tricks about different software and Operating Systems which will allow you to be more productive. If you are stuck with a problem, we also cover troubleshooting different software and hardware. All this is included in this category.

Right-Click Menu Slow To Open In Windows 10? Here’s The Solution

Tips/Troubleshooting 0 Comments

Recent updates of windows 10 has made the right click option very slow. If you want to open a file using the right click option, create a new folder or even simply want to refresh your desktop ,as soon as you right click on your mouse it takes a while before the menu finally opens. why does this happen? some third party apps that you install becomes a part of your right click context menu and as the number of options in the right click menu increases it takes more time to open up.

Don’t worry we have a solution for you in this article. In order to fix that ,you need to disable some of the apps from showing up in the context menu when you right click.

So just follow the steps given below and your right click menu will open in a snap!So let’s begin

Now in order to this you have to download an application. it is a third-party software and it is totally safe. You don’t even have to install this software as it is ready to run after download. It is called shellExView. So download the software from the link below .

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/shexview.html#DownloadLinks

After you download the file go to the download location an run the application as administrator.

7 1

And the app starts.

 

 

Now after opening the app go to options->filter by extension type.

Now as the dialogue box opens select context menu and click ok.

Now you will start seeing all the apps that are part of your context menu. From here you can disable third party apps so that they don’t show up and make your menu slow.

In order to do that select the apps you want to disable and click on the red button on the top right corner of the window.

Like in this case i don’t want or need the AVG antivirus or the notepad++ to appear in my right click context menu so I’ll disable them.

Now go and try your right click menu option and see the difference.There you go. It is a simple process that makes your right click super snappy!

If you want to bring those app back in the context menu just go and enable them in shellExView by selecting and clicking the green button on the top right corner and you will start seeing them.

10 Actionable Steps To Increase Your Laptop Battery Life

10 Actionable Steps To Increase Your Laptop Battery Life

List, Tips/Troubleshooting 1 Comment

Laptop battery life depends upon several factors. The factors can be directly or indirectly related to the computer. We will discuss some of these factors and possible actions to make your battery life longer in this article.

1. Know your battery

Currently there are two types of batteries available in the market. Maintaining both types of batteries is different. The newer batteries are Lithium Ion based, and have no problems with partial recharging or discharging (this is called memory effect). This means you can recharge the newer Li-On batteries any time you want.

battery internals

The older batteries are Nickel Metal Hydride based, and have memory effect problems. This means that from time to time, you have to drain the battery completely and then recharge it to full, to minimize any losses in battery capacity.

Editor’s note: The latest research reveals that the new sulfur-based battery is a lot safer and more powerful than Li-On battery. It can save charge four times than that of Li-On battery as it has a lot more energy density. See more about Lithium sulphur battery here.

2. Know your Energy Profile

All major Operating Systems including Windows come with default energy consumption profiles for controlling PC performance while on battery. When you are not doing processor and graphics intensive work (such as gaming, photo/video editing), you can switch to battery saving profile for longer battery life.

This is especially easy in Windows 7, where you can tap Windows + X hotkey to bring up the Windows Mobility Center which enlists energy consumption profiles in an easy to select drop down menu.

Windows Mobility Center

Another way to do the same is to click on the battery icon in the notification area (bottom right of your screen in Windows), which brings up the last three used energy consumption profiles.

Editor’s note: In case of Windows 8, you will need to press Windows Key + X + B shortcut key to open the mobility center.

3. External Devices

Devices plugged into USB ports, such as external hard drives, external optical drives, iPods or cell phones are a huge drain of battery. The best way is to unplug or turn off the devices not currently in use. Also, avoid charging cell phones or other portable devices when laptop is running on battery.

Usually 500mA power is available for each USB port. You can save this power by turning off all the USB ports while running on a battery.

To automatically turn off USB ports when on battery do the following:

  1. Go to Device Manager (Windows Key + X + M)
  2. Expand Universal Serial Bus Controllers by click on the + button
  3. Right click Universal Root Hub and select Properties
    USB Root Hub properties
  4. Under Power Management tab, check “Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power“

You will need to do this for each Universal Root Hub to make sure that all the USB ports are powered off.

4. Memory beats Hard Drive

Not having enough memory (RAM) in laptops can be a big energy drain. Operating systems use a procedure called Virtual Memory, which is when a part of hard disk is used as extension of memory, to run more applications in limited memory. This results in frequent use of hard drive, which is an energy intensive part of your laptop.

buy more memory

To avoid this, always have enough memory installed in your laptop.

5. Keep your laptop cool, your environment cooler

Heat is a waste of energy. The more your laptop heats up, the more power is drained from battery. So clean your laptop’s air vents regularly. Use air blowers to remove dust residuals. Use laptops in regulated temperature environments.

keep laptop cool

Also, don’t use laptop in open daylight. Laptops are not designed to radiate external heat, which means they can absorb sunlight and heat up much more quickly. This is a surefire way of killing your battery, and your laptop’s performance too.

6. Keep your drivers updated

Newer drivers are usually released to increase performance and decrease power consumption. While this may seem like an inept commentary, latest drivers can help your laptop increase the battery life.

Update Windows drivers

This is especially true for gaming laptops which have powerful GPUs. GPUs are leading contenders for energy consumption when it comes to gaming. So having latest drivers can help cut energy consumption.

7. Invest in cooling pads

If you use your laptop in bed or in sofa a lot, it can heat up quickly and cause load on battery. This is because clothes, and other such material decrease (or completely shut down) air flow to the heat vents, thus causing intense heating of the system which can not only drain the battery, but damage it (and other components also).

Laptop cooling pad

In order to avoid this, you can buy a portable USB stick connected cooling pad for your laptop. Pads come in cheap and have drastic effects at the temperature of your laptop. Always make sure that your laptop has a space to breathe, because no air flow means no cooling, which might decrease laptop performance.

8. Control screen brightness

Screen display requires lighting up multiple arrays of LED lights, which can put a lot of burden on the battery, decreasing its life. One way to control screen brightness in Windows 7 or Windows 8 is through the mobility center. Another way of controlling screen brightness is through the ‘function’ keys, which come in most of the newer laptops. Also, energy consumption profiles come with default settings for screen brightness.

Flux settings

Editor’s note: Flux is a wonderful utility which can automatically change the screen brightness according to the time of the day. For nights, it will decrease the brightness while at day time, the brightness will increase automatically making sure that your eyes stay safe as well as your battery performs better.

9. Prioritize the running programs

If you are working on a spreadsheet, listening to you MP3 collection, downloading your favorite TV Show, updating your software packages and installing a chunky program, all at the same time and without plugging in your power cord, the battery will drain before you can finish any work. Whenever using battery power, avoid overloading useless or otherwise uncritical programs. You can set the updates for night, when you would be watching your TV Show. You can install the program when listening to music during afternoon. Don’t expect more from your battery than it can offer.

Windows 8 power options

Editor’s note: The best way to do this is to change the Power management plan to Power Saver. This will force the processor and other PC components to run slower than normal.

10. Disable graphics accelerated display options

Windows Vista, 7 and 8 come with ‘Aero’ theme which uses the graphics resources for aesthetically pleasing display experience. But using graphics resources all the time can be a huge drain on the battery. High end graphics cards consume more power than hard disks and RAM combined, so be careful with what display settings you use.

In Windows 7, you can revert to a ‘basic’ theme which does not use graphics resources by going to Control Panel -> Appearance and Personalization -> Personalization and selecting any theme from the ‘Basic and High Contrast Themes’.

Performance options

You can also adjust performance settings by going to System Properties (Right Computer and select Properties) –> Advanced System Properties –> Adjust for best performance.

Hopefully these tips will help you to make better use of your laptop battery. If you have any suggestions or would like to share your experience, please leave a comment below.

How to Control the Temperature of Your Laptop

How to Control the Temperature of Your Laptop

Tips/Troubleshooting , 0 Comments

Laptops need an ideal temperature to perform optimally. We discuss some ways to monitor the laptop temperature including CPU, motherboard and hard drive and how to lower the temperature when it’s getting hot.

A laptop is supposed to be used and placed at our lap but it becomes really difficult at times to use it because of the overheating. If you are facing the same situation or if your system shuts down frequently (with no apparent reason), the most apparent reason is the laptop heating issue. Laptops are notorious for excessive heating. There are various reasons

Why Does my Laptop Get Hot?

Allow us to talk a little about the various factors which can heat up your system and quick solutions to combat the excessive heat.

Blocked Air Vents

Heat generation is a consequence of the way we design CPU chips for laptops. However, to avoid over heating air vents have been provided so that the air can flow through them and help the laptop to release the heat. These air vents may get blocked due to dust particles and affect the cooling system of your laptop.

Solution: Use canned air to blow air and unblock the air vents. Clean your laptop regularly.

High Performance Power Plan

High performance requires components to run at higher speeds which results in increased heat generation. Maybe you need your system to perform exceptionally for some time and you set it to High Performance, which is increasing the laptop temperature.

Solution: By default, the computers are set to Balanced Mode so it is recommended to switch back after you have completed your task. This will activate the System Cooling Policy and your laptop will stay safe from being overheated.

Frequent Use of Intense Processes

Running the intense processes or applications also affects the temperature of your computer. When you run heavy computer games and video encoding programs, they require a lot of juice from your CPU. Similarly, flash videos are also heavy on CPU.

Solution: Keep CPU intensive processes to minimum or run one at a time. You may prefer sitting in a cold environment, when extracting the maximum from your CPU.

How do I Monitor The Temperature of Laptop?

All these facts leads us to the need of monitoring the temperature of our laptop. CoreTemp and SpeedFan are the freeware that can serve this job.

SpeedFan

SpeedFan is a lightweight application that tracks the temperature of your laptop with explicit information about each core. The good point about Speed Fan is that, it displays the temperature in the system tray as well. So, you don’t need to switch or run the entire application again and again. Speed Fan is able to change the Fan Speeds with the changing temperature of your laptop.

Analysis by Speed Fan

CoreTemp

CoreTemp is another software to monitor the laptop temperature with detailed information. You can customize the settings and change the temperature polling intervals. You can also add the parameters to be monitored like CPU workload.

Core Temp temperature analyzer

How do I keep my laptop cool

Besides this, there are some other safety measures which should be adapted by laptop users to avoid any kind of problem because of the increased temperature.

Use Lap Desk

Use lap desk or any other fan stand, while using your laptop, which can keep it a little up from the surface and ease the air flow.

Sit in a Cold Environment

Try to sit in an environment with suitable temperature so that your laptop stays cool.

Use Temperature Control Software

Some laptops come with built-in temperature control software. These software safely shutdown the system, whenever the system passes a threshold temperature which could damage the system. Some free software are also available to control the laptop temperature and fans ( as discussed above).

Activate the Laptop Fan

Another safety measure is to make sure that the system cooling policy, provided by the manufacturers, is activated when you are using laptop. To adjust the settings:

  • Go to Control Panel –> All Control Panel Items –> Power Options –> Edit Plan Settings.
  • Select a power plan e.g., Power Saver.
  • Scroll down and expand ‘Processor Power Management’.
  • Select ‘System Cooling Policy’ as Active on Plugged in.

Control Laptop Fan

 

We hope these tweaks will enable you to monitor your laptop heating and temperatures and prevent any overheating problems. Your comments are always welcome!

Unhide Files And Folders By Single DOS Command

Unhide Files And Folders By Single DOS Command

Microsoft, Tips/Troubleshooting , , 1 Comment

While Windows Explorer is the best file explorer when it comes to browsing files that we have saved on our hard drives, viruses make use of certain properties in Windows Explorer to disable some important functions. These viruses usually come from USB Flash drives and disable the functions like hidden files can’t be unhidden again etc.

In this situation, the good old DOS can be very helpful as we can use DOS commands to unhide files and folders. This is also beneficial for cleaning the virus from the thumb drive.

To unhide a file from command line, go to Run –> cmd.

attrib help

This will open DOS command prompt. Now go to the parent folder where the file or folder resides which we want to unhide. To do this, will need to use the cd command (Change Directory). If you want to know about how to use the cd command, run the following command in command prompt:

cd /?

This will open help for the cd command. When you are in the desired folder, run the following command:

attrib -r -a -s -h *.*

Let’s discuss what this command is doing. Attrib command is used to add or remove attributes to a file. The attributes include read-only, archive, system, hidden etc. To add an attribute, we will need to use a plus (+) sign and to remove an attribute minus (-) sign is used. You can see in the above command that we are removing certain attributes.

So what are the attributes that are being removed? Here’s the explanation:

-r will remove the read-only attribute of the specified file.

-a will remove the archive attribute of the specified file.

-s will remove the system attribute of the specified file.

-h will remove the hidden attribute of the specified file.

*.* means that any file with any extension will be processed with this command. So all the files in the directory where this command is run will be unhidden and will become read-write. You will be able to edit and delete the files.

If you want to unhide all folders + subfolders and files, run the following command:

attrib *. -h -s /s /d

If you simply want to display a list of hidden files and folders and not change their attributes, run the following command:

dir/ah

I hope this will help people in troubleshooting their systems using the command line.

How to Manually Remove Virus From USB Flash Drive without Formatting

How to Manually Remove Virus From USB Flash Drive without Formatting

Security, Tips/Troubleshooting , 20 Comments

In this article, we will discuss about how to manually remove virus from a USB Flash Drive without formatting it. This means that if you follow this tutorial, your data will not be deleted while the virus will be removed from the pen drive.

USB Flash drives are a major source of virus infection. Most computer networks will get infected if one computer gets infected. If this happens, it’s always a lot of pain removing viruses from the networks. Sometimes, users will need to format their hard drives to get rid of the viruses. By using this guide, you will be able to remove the virus without formatting the Flash drive.

Please note that this method will work on a system which is not affected by viruses. Otherwise you may not be able to delete virus files.

Indication of Virus

1. When you plugin a drive, Some Autoplay feature polls you to select an option. If you see a folder like icon that reads open using the program provided on the device. Does not select that. Also does not select Open folder to view files using Windows Explorer. Since the virus can execute with these options. Cancel it.

Note: Windows 7 has disabled the Autorun Option for Flash Drives, since the autorun source is usually unknown.

Autorun dialog for USB drive

2. You will also see a folder like icon instead of Flash Drive Icon in my computer

My Computer

Removal of Virus

Un-hiding hidden files

In Start Menu Click RUN and then type cmd. Type your Flash Drive Letter followed with colon. Here

J:

type attrib -r -a -s -h *.* and press enter.

This will unhide all files.

Correct Way of Opening Flash Drives

Do not open the Flash Drive by double clicking the icon in my Computer or By Right clicking and then Open,Explorer

Open the USB Drive by using Folders Icon.Folder tree button

Click on the Folders icon then select your Flash Drive

Select USB drive from Folders tree

OR

You can select Your Flash Drive by using the Address Bar in Windows Explorer.

Opening flash drive from address bar

OR

Type your Drive letter in the Address BarType drive letter in address bar

After Opening the drive. Select Details View using this icondetails view icon

Identifying and removing the virus

You can now see what the virus does with your Flash Drive. The Virus disguises itself as folder. You can see that system file icon as illustrated here is like folder icon. You actually click on the file.

Actually you click on those virus file thinking of them as folder and the virus executes. In the detailed view you can clearly see that the system file has a Type description of Application and the system folder has a Type description of Folder.

Delete all such files. Carefully do not delete the folders.

Delete the Autorun.inf file

Deleting autorun.inf file

You can also delete these files using 7-ZIP. Since it shows such virus files as having application file icon.

Open 7-ZIP and Type your Flash Drive Letter in the Address Bar. Here J:\

Delete all the folders and files you think that you did not save them.

The folders could have names like Recycler,System Volume. Delete them also.

You can also see the Recycle Bin like icons delete them too.

In this illustration these files are virus files

0o.com,system.exe,2m66sr.exe,abk.bat

Deleting suspecious files from usb drive

Now Scan your Flash Drive with some Anti-Virus to delete exe infecting viruses. You can also use a portable antivirus. This is because some application files (which can be some programs like Adobe Reader Setup or else) be affected with exe virus.

If you do not have a proper Anti-Virus then Click on Search and select All files and Folders

In the All or part of file name field type *.exe

In the Look In field select Your Flash Drive

In the More Advanced options select Search System Folders and Search Hidden files and Folders.

When search is complete delete all files

How to Fix Internet Explorer Crashes

How to Fix Internet Explorer Crashes

Microsoft, Tips/Troubleshooting , 10 Comments

Internet Explorer to me is a very delicate browser. There are some major improvements in IE 7 and above but the base remains the same. People find it very difficult when Internet Explorer crashes and all the data is lost. Sometimes, the Internet Explorer keeps on crashing. There are several reasons behind this but the most common reason is the add-ons which are installed in Internet Explorer.

How to Find Out the Installed Add-ons

Internet Explorer includes an add-on manager which can be accessed from Internet Explorer Tools Menu –> Manage Add-Ons –> Enable or Disable Add-Ons.

Internet Explorer Addons

Internet Explorer 6 or earlier have this option in Tools –> Internet Options –> Programs –> Manage Add-Ons..

Here you will see all the Add-Ons which are installed in Internet Explorer. The most common reason of Internet Explorer crash is that some application has probably installed an add-on for Internet Explorer and it’s not working properly.

How to Fix Crashes

When Internet Explorer is constantly crashing, go to Control Panel –> Internet Options –> Programs –> Manage Add-Ons.

Manage Addons in Internet Explorer

See in your Crash error report that will be displayed after the crash, which module has created the crash. If you can’t find it, just try disabling the enabled add-ons one by one and see if your Internet Explorer start working again or not. Keep on doing this until you get the module which was creating troubles. Disable it and enable all others.

Having more problems?

Microsoft has a very good troubleshooter regarding Internet Explorer. If you are having more problems with Internet Explorer, I would recommend going to the following site and troubleshoot your problem.

http://support.microsoft.com/gp/pc_ie_start

Want to crash your Internet Explorer again?

Just for fun, here is a website, if you open it in Internet Explorer, it will crash :-).

http://www.crashie.com/

If you are using Internet Explorer 10, you can follow our guide on how to fix Internet Explorer 10 crashes.

3 Ways To Find Unknown Device Drivers In Windows

3 Ways To Find Unknown Device Drivers In Windows

Featured, List, Tips/Troubleshooting, Windows , 11 Comments

Device driver installation has always been a headache for most of the people. Either one thing or the other is always missing. Once we want to clean install Windows, we have to make sure that we have got all the device drivers for our system. If we miss some of the drivers, nothing works fine. Here are some ways to find unknown device drivers in Windows.

1- Using Unknown Device Identifier

Unknown Device Identifier enables you to identify the yellow question mark labeled Unknown Devices in Device Manager. And reports you a detailed summary for the manufacturer name, OEM name, device type, device model and even the exact name of the unknown devices. With the collected information, you might contact your hardware manufacturer for support or search the Internet for the corresponding driver with a simple click. With this utility, you might immediately convert your unidentified unknown devices into identified known devices and find proper driver on the Internet and contact the hardware device manufacturer or vender. Known devices recognized by Microsoft Windows will also be analyzed independent of the operating system.

Unknown Device Identifier

Download Unknown Device Identifier from the following location:

[download id=”66″]

2- Using Unknown Devices

Unknown Devices helps you find what those unknown devices in Device Manager really are.

By checking Device Manager for unknown devices and extracting information from it, this program attempts to figure out what the device is. You might not have to open your case or look up random numbers off of PCI cards to figure out what they are.

Unknown Device Tool

However when I run this software on my Windows Vista machine, it doesn’t detect my operating system. I have updated the vendors database file and packed with this software. The software can be downloaded from the following location:

[download id=”67″]

3- Manually Identifying The Unknown Devices

To manually identify the devices we have to find out the device instance ID which has two parts, one is the vendor ID and the second is Device ID. Once we have got the vendor ID and identified the device ID, we can easily find the drivers for our device.

To find the device instance ID go to Device Manager –> Right click the unknown device –> Properties –> Details.

Now from the drop down menu select Device Instance Path (Windows Vista)/ Device Instance ID (Windows XP)

It will give you a string value which contains the vendor ID and the Device ID. The string is like this:

HDAUDIO\FUNC_02&VEN_14F1&DEV_5045&SUBSYS_103C30D5&REV_1001\4&2675E3A&0&0002

Where red is the Vendor ID and green is the Device ID. Note down both of them.

Once you have the Vendor ID and the device ID, you can go to the following websites and find out the vendor and device name and search for its drivers.

http://www.pcidatabase.com/

http://www.pcisig.com/membership/vid_search/

http://pciids.sourceforge.net/

You can also download PCI Utilities which displays the Vendors and devices in human readable format instead of the alphanumeric code characters.

How To Enable Insert Key In Microsoft Word 2007, 2010 and 2013

How To Enable Insert Key In Microsoft Word 2007, 2010 and 2013

Microsoft, Tips/Troubleshooting , , 13 Comments

If you are used to using Microsoft Word 2003 or earlier, you should have used the Insert key in order to replace the characters while typing. This is also called Overtype mode. Things have changed in Word 2007 and onwards including Word 2010 and Word 2013.

Microsoft Word versions previous to Word 2010 and Word 2010 and even Windows WordPad had an option to overwrite the text if we preseds the Insert key before typing anything. Things have changed in Microsoft Word 2007 and onwards. Now there is an Insert Mode which works in the same way as pressing insert key in the previous versions. But the problem is that it must be enabled before it can be used in Microsoft Word 2007 or Word 2010. Otherwise Insert will have no function by default.

Microsoft Word 2013 starting

There are two ways by which we can enable the overtype mode in Word 2013, Word 2010 or Word 2010.

1- Using Word Options

To enable this feature in Microsoft Word 2007, follow the instructions below:

  1. Open Microsoft Word 2007 and click on the File Menu Globe on the top left corner of the Microsoft Word window.
  2. Go to Word Options.
  3. Word 2013 options
  4. In Word Options, go to Advanced and check the following checkbox:
    "Use the insert key to control overtype mode"
    Overtype mode to enable the insert key

This will enable the Insert Mode in Microsoft Word 2007 and same is the case with Microsoft Word 2010 and Word 2013. I have updated the screenshot with the latest Word 2013 options. The only difference between the different versions of Word is of the graphical user interface. You have to go to Options –> Advanced –> Editing options and check “Use overtype mode” or just press the Alt + V shortcut key once you are in the Advanced options.

2- Using the status bar

There is also a quicker way to enable Overtype mode of the insert and replace mode in Microsoft Word. If you have opened a document in Word, just right click the status bar at the bottom of Word window and make sure the Overtype is checked.

Enable overtype through status bar

The screenshot is from Word 2013 but the same applies for Word 2010 and Word 2007. If you know of any other shortcut to enable the overtype mode or the insert key, please let us know through comments.

Check Disk (chkdsk) Runs Every Time Windows Starts

Check Disk (chkdsk) Runs Every Time Windows Starts

Microsoft, Tips/Troubleshooting, Windows , 35 Comments

Sometimes it happens that disk check always starts to check the file system on one or more drives for consistency on Windows Startup. If any key is pressed, the disk checking is aborted. In this article, we will prevent chkdsk from running every time Windows starts.

Actually this is because some data structure of the drive or some file is corrupted which can not be recovered and check disk is always run at Windows Startup. Or sometimes it may take several hours for disk checking to scan all the drives. So disabling it or postponing disk check is better. There are several methods to disable disk checking at Windows Startup. Two of them are given below:

Method 1: Using CHKNTFS utility

Disable check disk at Windows boot

CHKNTFS is a utility that has been developed by Microsoft to disable disk checking on certain drives at Windows startup. To use this utility go to Start –> Run –> cmd.

If you want to disable check disk on C: drive, use the following command on command prompt.

chkntfs /X C:

If you want to disable check disk on two or more drives, just keep on adding the drives:

chkntfs /X C: D: E:

This will disable check disk on C, D and E drives.

If you want to restore what you have done, that is, enable automatic disk checking on all the drives again, just run the following command:

chkntfs /D

This will restore all the drives to automatic disk checkup.

Method 2: Using Registry

To disable automatic disk checking at Windows startup through registry, go to the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager

In the right hand pane, double click BootExecute.

The default value of the key is autocheck autochk *

* means every drive is checked for consistency. Just add /K:C at the end before *. /K switch will disable autocheck on C: drive at Windows startup. So the final value should look like this:

autocheck autochk /k:C *

If you want to add more drives, the key should look like this: (disabling C and D drives)

autocheck autochk /k:C /k:D *

If you want to restore everything to default, just replace the key with the default one i.e.,

autocheck autochk *

How To Fix Wmploc.dll Version Error In Windows Media Player

How To Fix Wmploc.dll Version Error In Windows Media Player

Microsoft, Tips/Troubleshooting 0 Comments

If you have recently installed a skin or updated Windows Media Player and the installation didn’t go smoothly, it will display the following error message:

The file wmploc.dll has a version number of 11.0.6001.7000 where 11.0.6001.7004 was expected.
Windows Media Player is not installed properly and must be reinstalled.
Do you want to install the Player from the Microsoft Web site?

This is usually the case when you install a new Windows Media Player skin and the skin installer makes changes to wmploc.dll. This is because WMP stores most of its UI components in this dll file. But since wmploc.dll is a system file, it will be checked every time Windows Media Player starts. And since the file has changed, the version numbering will be out of sync and you will get the above mentioned error message.

wmploc.dll Properties

You can always restore the original wmploc.dll file either from the Windows setup (It is inside System32 folder) or by running system file scanner (sfc /scannow). An easier fix would be to synchronize the current version number of wmploc.dll in Windows Registry.

Microsoft has already provided a Fixit tool for solving this problem. Just download the Fixit tool and run it. Restart the computer when done and Windows Media Player should open cleanly without any errors.

If you want to do it manually, just following the steps below:

For Windows XP

Open command prompt as administrator

Run the following command:
unregmp2.exe /UpdateWMPVersion
regsvr32 wmp.dll

This should synchronize wmploc.dll version in Windows Registry automatically.

For Windows Vista and above

If you are running Windows Vista or above Operating System, you will need to run the following command using command prompt opened as administrator:

%SystemRoot%\inf\unregmp2.exe /UpdateWMP

This was a quick solution to the problem faced by one of my clients. I hope this will help other users when they encounter the same problem.

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