Dotnetwizard.net

How to disable wmpnscfg.exe and wmpnetwk.exe.

11 January, 2009

WMP 11 has the ability to share media between different computers on the same network. For this to work, there’s a service that shares the library even if WMP isn’t open. And these files are the main files of that service. So if you are using media sharing then you should not disable these, but if you don’t use then of course this service is very annoying as it uses up your resources (only a little bit) and no matter what you do to disable it just keeps coming back. If this is your case then read below on how to disable wmpnscfg.exe and wmpnetwk.exe.

Part 01: Disable Media Sharing

1. Run Windows Media Player, goto Library->Media Sharing

2. Deselect the sharing options given.

if they were selected, once you deselect and press ok you would get a prompt. Click yes and close Media player.

Part 02: Disabling the services and start up entries

There are two ways to do this, you can use the batch file given below or you can manually disable.

# Batch file to disable wmpnsfg and wmpnetwk: wmpnscfg_disable_dotnetwizard.net

Manual method

1. Open services by typing services.msc on the run box, find Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service, stop it and disable it.

2. Open a command prompt window and type %PROGRAMFILES%\Windows Media Player\wmpnscfg.exe /Close

3. Open regedit and go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run and remove the WMPNSCFG entry.

4. Goto HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\Preferences\HME using the egistry editor and change DisableDiscovery to 2.

Now you can use WMP without starting the sharing services anymore.