THE INTERNET EXPLORER WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER VIDEO PROBLEM
You have tried just about everything, checking the blogs and web pages, taking their advice and applying it. Nothing solves your problem: Internet Explorer will not play video. You just get a video console on a website with an error message, or the console remains black and blank.
The problem for IE is that it does not install with all the needed plugins. Yes, some basic ones are there, but basic to IE developers is not what is "required" by users. When you buy a car or receive a free gift, you at least expect it to work properly.
Setting WMP as the default player is not enough to make it work on all web pages.
THE SOLUTION
1) Check if WMP is on the Default Program list.
Click "Start", "Control Panel", "Programs", "Default Programs" and "Set Your Default Programs".
Check if "Windows Media Player" is on the list. If it isn't, go here.
Welcome back if you had this problem.
2) Set WMP as the default player.
Click "Start", "Control Panel", "Programs", "Default Programs" and "Set Your Default Programs".
Choose Windows Media Player from the list. Click "Set this program as default".
You can go further and choose "Set associations for a program" where you can set a player for each file type.
3) Set Computer Defaults.
Click "Start", "Control Panel", "Programs", "Default Programs" and "Set program access and computer defaults".
Click "Custom" and click the expand information arrows on the right.
Cursor down to "Choose a default media player".
Check "Windows Media Player"
Click "OK".
Turn off Internet Explorer and restart.
Go to a website that has video. A warning message will appear across the top of the page in IE asking if you want WMP to play video. Choose "for all sites".
Internet Explorer will play video on any site now.
