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I need to tweak a WinXP Pro machine (well, several of them, actually) to start Windows Media Player on startup, and have it begin playing its current playlist immediately.

I've considered doing a .bat script, but I can't find the command line parameter that lets me tell WMP to simply start playing whatever playlist it currently has loaded.

Of course, if it's easy/easier to do this by setting up WMP as a service, I'll gladly do that instead.

How would you recommend approaching this problem?

Edit: Some context might help. The machines in question are rigged to behave as in-house cable TV channels for assisted living facilities and the like. They mostly show slideshows (with announcements, dining menus, etc.), and a lot of clients like to use WMP to play background music.

The machines are set to auto-install any OS updates from Microsoft. The problem is that this tends to make them reboot, which has the effect of knocking-out WMP until somebody notices and restarts it. This can result in very grumpy clients.

Thus, not only do I need to start WMP on startup, I need to get it playing whatever its existing playlist happens to be.

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What version of WMP is on these computers? There are some potential registry hacks, but it depends on the version. – Dillie-O Aug 23 '10 at 16:03
@Dillie-O: WMP 11; as long as media player updates are a part of Microsoft's update packages, they'll have the latest version. – BlairHippo Aug 23 '10 at 16:14
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3 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

I did a little digging, and there is an auto-generated play list of most recent items located in the following directory:

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Media Player\lastplayed.wpl

Using the command prompt and simply specifying this file fired up Windows Media Player and started up the playlist with a few songs that I had dragged to a playlist, but did not save.

You should be able to add a simple start menu/registry command that launches Windows Media Player targetting the file above.

I got this to work in Windows 7 with Windows Media Player 12, but there shouldn't be any issues updating the paths for XP and Windows Media Player 11 should have the same folder structure.

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Unfortunately, I'm not having any luck turning up an equivalent file for XP/WMP 11. Damn. This looked like a winner, too. – BlairHippo Aug 23 '10 at 17:56
Wait, scratch that; I failed to account for the sucktastic wretchedness of Explorer's "Search" feature. C:\Documents and Settings\[user]\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Media Player\lastplayed.wpl may well be exactly what I'm looking for. – BlairHippo Aug 23 '10 at 18:48
I just found an old online reference that used that path as well. Hopefully it'll work. – Dillie-O Aug 23 '10 at 21:17
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up vote 1 down vote

If you save the playlist, than add the playlist to the start up menu. When it loads it auto plays the playlist.

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Clever, but I don't think I can use it. See my edit; I'd need something that auto-saves the playlist and automatically adds it to the startup menu. – BlairHippo Aug 23 '10 at 15:29
Actually, in conjunction with Dillie-O's solution, pretty nifty. – BlairHippo Aug 23 '10 at 21:28
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up vote 0 down vote

Not sure why you would want to do this, as to me this sounds awful. However, maybe if you are sending some machines out and you need an intro video, or its for a kiosk type machine I can see why.

Can't you just add the media file you want to play into startup? If it is correctly associated it should start the file straight away.

Just tried this on my XP VM and worked a treat.

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See my edit. Unfortunately, it's not a specific file that I want to play, it's whatever the user defined as the most recent playlist for WMP. – BlairHippo Aug 23 '10 at 15:29
I think you will struggle, as often in the case of the above where its a windows update shutdown, the shutdown won't necessarily be clean and therefore won't necessarily save the playlist. – Kip Aug 23 '10 at 16:16
Perhaps. But WMP seems to remember its prior playlist fairly well. And given the low stakes, having something that works MOST of the time will be perfectly acceptable, even if it doesn't work ALL of the time. – BlairHippo Aug 23 '10 at 16:25
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