064bit Xiph codec breaks file-type dialog in WMP12

In an [int­link id=“14” type=“post”]earlier article[/intlink] I recom­men­ded installing the Xiph codecs to sup­port FLAC files in 64bit Media Play­er and Media Cen­ter. One of the com­ments (my thanks to thom007) on that post poin­ted out that the Xiph codecs break the “file type” dia­log box in Media Play­er 12. Below is a work-around which restores the file-type dia­log box. The pos­sible side effects are as yet unknown, so exper­i­ment at your own risk.

To restore the file-type func­tion­al­ity open an elev­ated com­mand prompt and unre­gister dsfOggDemux2.dll by run­ning regsvr32 /u "c:\program files (x86)\xiph.org\ogg codecs\dsfOggDemux2.dll".

This fix will inev­it­ably break some func­tion­al­ity, at a guess related to ogg files, but I do not know what yet. Give it a try and feel free to post your exper­i­ences. I have tested that FLAC files still play­back ok with this fix, but I haven’t tested any of the oth­er formats sup­por­ted by Xiph.

Update:

There is a second issue with the xiph codecs I have become aware of. If you install both 32bit and 64bit codecs on a 64bit sys­tem both sets of codecs will install to C:\Program Files (x86) — and one set will over-write the oth­er. To avoid this issue change the install path of the 64bit codecs to just C:Program Files

Update 2:

The issue in update 1 has now been resolved in the Xiph installers