Removal of Windows Media Player 9 in Windows 2003

[BerserkerD]

whenever i open a mediafile in windows 2003 the windows media player 9 setup pops up. i haven't installed it and i don't plan to. i want to use a third party player (media player classic).

although i defined mpc as standard player for the media files in the file types menu the wmp 9 setup still keeps starting. i even deleted any wmp9 entry from the reg and replaced it with a corresponding path of mpc. this didn't work either and it still loads up after klicking such a file.

replacing the wmplayer.exe with a renamed mpc.exe doesn't work, too. windows recognises the change after a few settings and replaces the fake file with the original.

does anyone know a tool how to overcome this prob? or does anyone know how at least stop windows from checking if the wmp-files are still original?

any help is appreciated. thnx in advance

[BerserkerD]

meanwhile i found out that some players are capable of registering filetypes to them (e.g. realplayer or winamp 5) and others are not. so i installed winamp 5 and let it register all media file types to it. then i replaced the winamp.exe with a renamed mplayerc.exe. the only thing left to do was unchecking the dde option for every registered filetype and voila... it worked

i'm still wondering why some players are still overrun by wmp 9

so if anyone has concrete information i would be very glad