Hit the Win+R keyboard combination on your Windows PC to open the Run dialog box.Make sure to create a System Restore point as a standard precautionary measure when dealing with the Registry files. Use the Registry Editor to Prevent Windows Media Player from Downloading Codecs AutomaticallyĪnother method you can use to stop automatic downloading of codecs on Windows Media Player is through the Registry Editor. Click on the OK button to save your selection.Choose “Enabled” selection to enable the setting.(Full path: User Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Media Player > Playback)

Under the Windows Player Player folder on the User Configuration, go to Playback.Enter gpedit.msc and click the OK button or the Enter key on your keyboard.Open the Run prompt on your Windows 10 computer by hitting the Win+R keyboard keys.Stop Windows Media Player from Downloading Codecs Automatically using Group Policy Editor We will be using the Group Policy Editor and Registry Editor to manually set the option to prevent automatic codec downloads on Windows Media Player. Please note that if you are using Windows Media Player 12, the newest version of the program, Microsoft has already removed the feature by default. How to Configure and Prevent Automatic Codec Downloading on Windows Media Player Taking that into account, we have created a guide on how you can disable the feature and prevent Windows Media Player from downloading codecs automatically. It can take a toll on your bandwidth if you have a limited resource for that. However, some users find it annoying and unnecessarily resource-hogging especially if they seldom play unsupported media files on Windows Media Player. That is why this has been a very helpful feature that takes away the hassle of manually searching for codecs and installing them just to play a certain video or audio file on Windows Media Player.

Windows Media Player does not natively support a lot of video and audio file formats and containers. The automatic downloading of missing codecs has been around for several versions of the Windows operating system including Windows 7 and Windows 10. The codec helps convert the data from one container to another. Windows Media Player automatically downloads codecs (short for coder-decoder or compressor-decompressor) to play unsupported media files.

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