When using Windows Live Messenger, if you don’t have Windows Media Player installed, and try to tick “Show what I’m listening to”, you will receive a message saying “This feature requires Windows Media Player 9 or later. To install the latest version of Windows Media Player, click Ok”, for those of you like me, who dislike Windows Media Player, will understand why i would not use it, however i am using Windows 7, and Windows Media Player causes havoc with the file associations when setting them for a 3rd party media player, the best way to do it is remove WMP altogether.
Upon removing it, i ran into the problem above, and i know its only an aesthetic feature in WLM, but i like to have it enabled, so i started looking for a way to re enable it, i actually started looking at the Assembly of WLM, but alot of files are loaded, so i couldn’t find the energy to look, but then it dawned on me to use the registry for it, so i did, and i found a solution and wrote a little tool to enable Now Playing.
A download to my tool can be downloaded below, its totally clean, literally compiled it 5 minutes ago.
File: WLM_NowPlaying_Enabler.exe
Size: 211 KB
#1 by saiyonic on January 3rd, 2010
i have a microsoft .NET framework error stating: “conversion from type ‘Byte()’ to type ‘String’ is not valid”. and when i press continue anyway no profile is listed in the dropdown widget.
#2 by BrandiniMP on January 3rd, 2010
Have you tried running as administrator?
#3 by saiyonic on January 9th, 2010
yes i ran it as administrator (ps. it runs as admin by default) here is the detailed error i am running on win7 64bit.
See the end of this message for details on invoking
just-in-time (JIT) debugging instead of this dialog box.
************** Exception Text **************
System.InvalidCastException: Conversion from type ‘Byte()’ to type ‘String’ is not valid.
at Microsoft.VisualBasic.CompilerServices.Conversions.ToString(Object Value)
at WLM_NowPlaying_Enabler.modGeneral.GetMSN_ID_EMAILS(String[]& UIDs, String[]& Emails)
at WLM_NowPlaying_Enabler.frmMain.Form1_Load(Object sender, EventArgs e)
at System.EventHandler.Invoke(Object sender, EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Form.OnLoad(EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.CreateControl(Boolean fIgnoreVisible)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.CreateControl()
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WmShowWindow(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.ControlNativeWindow.WndProc(Message& m)
at System.Windows.Forms.NativeWindow.Callback(IntPtr hWnd, Int32 msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam)
************** Loaded Assemblies **************
mscorlib
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.4927 (NetFXspW7.050727-4900)
CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/Microsoft.NET/Framework64/v2.0.50727/mscorlib.dll
—————————————-
WLM_NowPlaying_Enabler
Assembly Version: 0.0.0.1
Win32 Version: 0.0.0.1
CodeBase: file:///C:/Users/saiyonic/Desktop/WLM_NowPlaying_Enabler.exe
—————————————-
Microsoft.VisualBasic
Assembly Version: 8.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 8.0.50727.4927 (NetFXspW7.050727-4900)
CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/Microsoft.VisualBasic/8.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/Microsoft.VisualBasic.dll
—————————————-
System
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.4927 (NetFXspW7.050727-4900)
CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.dll
—————————————-
System.Windows.Forms
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.4927 (NetFXspW7.050727-4900)
CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Windows.Forms/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Windows.Forms.dll
—————————————-
System.Drawing
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.4927 (NetFXspW7.050727-4900)
CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Drawing/2.0.0.0__b03f5f7f11d50a3a/System.Drawing.dll
—————————————-
System.Runtime.Remoting
Assembly Version: 2.0.0.0
Win32 Version: 2.0.50727.4927 (NetFXspW7.050727-4900)
CodeBase: file:///C:/Windows/assembly/GAC_MSIL/System.Runtime.Remoting/2.0.0.0__b77a5c561934e089/System.Runtime.Remoting.dll
—————————————-
************** JIT Debugging **************
To enable just-in-time (JIT) debugging, the .config file for this
application or computer (machine.config) must have the
jitDebugging value set in the system.windows.forms section.
The application must also be compiled with debugging
enabled.
For example:
When JIT debugging is enabled, any unhandled exception
will be sent to the JIT debugger registered on the computer
rather than be handled by this dialog box.
#4 by Zingo Fox on April 21st, 2010
FINALLY something that works..
the register files that some claim to work isnt doing me any good, but this thing managed to do it! thanks a lot