Prevent Windows Media Player from downloading codecs automatically using Group Policy
To prevent Windows Media Player from downloading codecs automatically using Group Policy, follow these steps- To know more, keep reading. At first, you have to open the Local Group Policy Editor. For that, press Win+R, type gpedit.msc, and hit the Enter button. After opening it, navigate to the following path- In the Playback folder, you will get a setting called Prevent Codec Download. Double-click on it and select the Enabled option. Click the OK button to save the change. After that, Windows Media Player won’t download media codecs automatically, and the Download codecs automatically checkbox will be disabled as well.
Stop Windows Media Player from downloading codecs automatically using Registry Editor
To stop Windows Media Player from downloading codecs automatically using Registry Editor, follow these steps- Let’s check out the detailed version of these steps. First, create a System Restore point as you are going to change in Registry files. To get started, you have to open the Registry Editor. For that, press Win+R, type regedit and hit the Enter button. Next, click the Yes button in the UAC popup window. After opening the Registry Editor, navigate to this path- If you can find the WindowsMediaPlayer sub-key inside Microsoft, don’t follow the next step. Otherwise, keep following.
Right-click on Microsoft > New > Key and name it as WindowsMediaPlayer.
Following that, right-click on WindowsMediaPlayer > New > DWORD (32-bit) Value and name it as PreventCodecDownload. Then, double-click on PreventCodecDownload set the Value data as 1, and click the OK button to save the change. That’s all!
