0Switching the default WMP to x64 in Windows 7

One of the strangest things in Win­dows 7 x64 is the pres­ence of both x86 and x64 ver­sions of Win­dows Media Play­er 12. Even stranger is that des­pite Win­dows Media Cen­ter being 64bit only (and there­fore requir­ing 64bit codecs) Microsoft saw fit to set the default WMP12 ver­sion to the x86 edi­tion. For those of us who don’t wish to main­tain 2 sets of codecs it is desir­able to change this default status. How­ever, Microsoft do not appear to have provided a simple way to do this as yet. So here’s how…

1. Open a com­mand prompt and run unregmp2 /SwapTo:64.

2. Take own­er­ship and then change the first part of the value of the fol­low­ing registry keys

[bash]HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{45597c98-80f6-4549–84ff-752cf55e2d29}\LocalServer32
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{cdc32574-7521–4124-90c3-8d5605a34933}\LocalServer32
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{ed1d0fdf-4414–470a-a56d-cfb68623fc58}\LocalServer32[/bash]

from “%ProgramFiles(x86)%.…
to “%Pro­gram­Files%.…

These 3 keys in order apply to the con­text menu entries for enqueue, burn to cd and play

You may need to unpin WMP from the taskbar before this oper­a­tion and repin the x64 ver­sion once you’ve com­pleted the procedure

Update: I have been noti­fied that the x64 ver­sion of WMP12 does not work with burn to CD so swap­ping to WMP x64 may cause prob­lems if you use WMP to burn CD’s. I have nev­er done so and hence did­n’t encounter this issue. If you have this prob­lem but want to use x64 WMP then I recom­mend down­load­ing CDBurn­er-XP as a free altern­at­ive burn­ing program.

Update 2: There is more dis­cus­sion on this issue on Chris123NT’s blog.