How to Install Windows Media Player 11 on Wine

Solution 1:

This is a Half-Answer. I say half since you will not be able to visualize the theme of WMP11 but you will be able to play music and videos (Videos in this case only in fullcreen). If this is something you think solves the problem then accept, if not (Most likely will not since it is a weird way of installing it) then feel free to comment on it.

(Tested on my PC a laptop and in a last sorry excuse for PC just to make sure the procedure can repeat itself)

Steps to install Windows Media Player:

Pre-Requesites:

• Have Wine 1.3.33+
• Have winecfg opened all the time since you will be using it a lot.
• Configure winecfg in the video tab to a virtual window. In my case I set this at 1024x768.
• Configure winecfg to use Windows 2003
• No need to configure any libraries
• Pray to the Flying Spaghetti Monster and let yourself be touched by his noodly appendage

After all that is made (I also have PlayOnLinux installed. I mention it just in case POL installed something in Wine and I did not notice or didn't tell me about it ^^) we can proceed with WMP11:

1. Download the WMP11 version for Windows XP (I only tested this one. It is about 25MB)
2. Having winecfg already opened and configure to emulate a virtual desktop of at least 1024x768 (So to not use fullscreen) open a terminal in Ubuntu (Outside wine) and go where the WMP11 executable is.
3. Run wine wmp11-windowsxp-x86-enu.exe where the downloaded installer is. At this point winecfg should be configure in Windows 2003 mode. You will get the welcome screen, click on validate and wait for it. In Windows 2003 mode it will skip validation and go to the EULA. DO NOT ACCEPT THE EULA YET!.
4. Go to the winecfg window (which both should be sharing, winecfg and WMP11) and change the system from Windows 2003 to XP. Save it but don't close winecfg yet.
5. Continue with the installation of WMP11.
6. You have a chance of finishing the installation with no problem, but if it hangs (Which probably will) in 25%, 50%, 75% do not worry. Just go to the terminal that you used wine to execute wmp11 and press CTRL+C. After that, just in case type wineserver -k to kill any remaining wine related processes.
7. Repeat steps 3 through 5 until the installation finishes completely remembering that to start WMP11 you need to have winecfg configured to Windows 2003 and after the validation, change it back to Windows XP to continue the installation.
8. Assuming you got to the end of the installation it will ALWAYS say "You have failed!. The installation went wrong and did not survive. Kitties will die". Do not worry about the "did not complete part" at the end of the installation. It actually finished. At least looking from a functionality perspective.
9. Go to the WMP11 folder inside the wine directory where the installer "installed" the WMP folder. Setup winecfg for Windows XP and run wmplayer.exe (You can run it from Nautilus). In my case it is in /home/cyrex/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Windows Media Player. Remember to not close winecfg since we are not done yet with it.

10. WMP11 will open but it will be horrible as seen here:

    

    Press Enter 4 or 5 times to accept something that you can not see. I do not remember how many. Just do 5 and that should be enough.

11. Again, close WMP11. run wineserver -k just to make sure.

12. Change winecfg from Windows XP to Windows 7.

13. Open wmplayer.exe again. This time you should see a little bit more stuff like here:

    

14. And one last time, close WMP11. run wineserver -k and change winecfg from Windows 7 to FINALLY Windows XP where it will remain. NOW you can close winecfg.

That is all. The option to run WMP11 can be found in the Open With option when right clicking in Nautilus, as seen here:

You can hear music, add mp3 lists and hear all songs from the list as shown here:

Lastly you CAN see a movie but you need to make it fullscreen to see it. Just press ALT+ENTER for fullscreen. The menu below while fullscreen will not work, instead just right click the video and the context menu should help. As shown here:

Solution 2:

The only link I can find at the moment is through Microsoft. Unfortunately it requires you jump through the Windows Genuine Advantage nonsense so you either need a legit XP machine nearby (a VirtualBox install should do) or Google skills I don't have to find an alternative.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=1d224714-e238-4e45-8668-5166114010ca

Even then, you have a fight with Wine ahead of you. Depending on the power of your computer, it may well just be simpler to run XP in VirtualBox when you want to play encrypted WMV video.

If you have a powerful computer and you spend some time stripping XP down (through nlite, etc) as I have, it shouldn't take more than a few seconds to boot.

Solution 3:

According to http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10219 the Installer for WMP 11 does not try to test WGA if the Windows version is set to Vista. You can check this in winecfg (Applications->Configure Wine). The latest test results show that there might be problems installing this way, but those test results are rather old -- I suggest trying the latest wine1.3 package in the PPA if you run into problems.

There are also some other possible workarounds in the bug report there.

Solution 4:

According to WineDB Windows Media Player 11 cannot run properly using wine.

It has been rated as garbage meaning that even if you can make it run it will not be stable / usable.

Has an alternative I recommend you use Windows Media Player 10 which should install and work (with limited abilities) using wine.

You can download Windows Media Player 10 directly from Microsoft here.