I recently found that WMP10 would not play audio - either from audio only files (.wav or mp3) or the audio from video files (avi, .wmv). It won't play CD's either. Other media applications (Real Player, Winamp and VLC media Player) work fine in all modes, as do the "windows sounds". Obviously, the sound card is OK and not muted etc, and all channels of the windows mixer are "up". Neither is the mute button in WMP checked. I upgraded WMP10 to WMP11, hoping that a fresh install would cure the problem, but it hasn't. If I play an audio file with WMP, the visualisation is active but no sound. Other media apps still work fine. I can also confirm that mplayer2.exe works. There are no error messages.

Device Manager shows no issues at all. OS is XPHome, SP3. SP3 has been installed for some time and everything worked fine, so I don't think it's the cause of this.

Help!!!!

Media Player plays audio using the system's default audio device. Make sure your sound card is selected in the Sound Devices control panel, and isn't set to "Default Audio Device" as it usually is.

It is, although I have tried the others too with no success. I've also compared settings and the codec list with another computer on which everything works - they are identical.

I cracked it - more more by luck and intuition than anything else. I clicked on the Sync drop-down and selected "Refresh Devices". hey presto - sound!

I hope this might help someone else.

That's a very interesting problem and solution, I'll have to write that one down.