Thin Ice

I have just sent my Notebook on a holiday to NZ (it lives in the UK) and all the info is back. Thank you, this the best bit of advice I have seen in a long time.

Sorry to be annoying, but how do i change the locale setting? i feel like i've looked everywhere.

Control Panel > Regional and Language Settings. It's the very first parameter.

You can also look up Locale in Windows XP's help off the Start Menu.

Good one, mate, it worked. I spent hours looking for a solution. Thanks!

Thank You from Canada!

I had tried changing my country location (with no results) to get rid of the new lousy Napster album information.

Now with my Input Locale setting set to English(Belize) I once again get the familiar album data from windowsmedia.com!

thanx alot, I switched the input locale (to Luxembourgh, which is quite the same as the german one) and got the wonderful AMG info back. The dude who decided to force people to see the darn useless shops (wanna buy same music one more time? I don't) deserves his balls ripped off.

Many thanks...

Finally got rid of that stupid useless shopping rubbish.

You bloody legend. THis was driving me nuts. looks like we finally have a use for nz in this world

Does this 'hack' still work as of Mar. 7, 2005? I just get a white page with:

"No Available Online Stores
There are no available online stores at the moment. Please check again later."

I like 'shiny, new things'- like WMP 10, but I _really_ miss the AMG Info Center View with the album/artist info.

Thanks in advance!

BTW, I have WMP v10.00.00.3646

and I live in the US VS Australia (?)... so I'm not sure if the artist/album info requests are getting routed elsewhere (if at all)

You'll get that message if you click on the online stores button, but if you use "View Album Info" you should see album reviews etc.

I don't seem to have a "View Album Info" option but I do have a "Find Album Info" option that allows me to search metaservices.windowsmedia.com's DB for artist, title, album art metadata... but that works on both locales anyway.

I did notice though if you click on the "Album Art" picture in the bottom right hand corner of the "Now Playing" page (You can enable this by checking "Show Media Information" under the "View", "Now Playing Options" menu), you get different results depending on if you have the locale (or "Standards and Formats") option set to "English (United States)" or "English (New Zealand)".

- With "Standards and Formats" set to "English (New Zealand)" (it doesn't let you select a provider) you only get 2 AMG pages from the original WMP 9 "Info Center View" ("Album Information" and "Artist Profile").

- With "Standards and Formats" set to "English (United States)" (assuming that is you have MSN Music as the provider) you actually get both of the above and more. The format is slightly different but the reviews are still from AMG (except not as obviously noted) and the (AMG) bio just requires a few extra clicks to find. In addition you now have a "User Reviews" section, a "Listeners Also Liked" section and a way to listen to samples of some other tracks from that album (or artist).

Agreeably, this is all just a way to get you to buy more music online, but as long as it stays non-obtrusive and provides extra value, I have nothing against it. Perhaps this is getting closer to the i-Tunes model. IMO, the new challenge for music stores is to make online music purchasing so much more easier, portable, and seamless, that it's easier than the alternative: downloading it.

It's still not the "Info Center View" though, which is what I liked the most about WMP 9. I liked getting medium 'chunks' of artist + album info in the visualization area while still having the playlist accessible and not having it become a mini web browser. :)


Thanks! I think I will need to re-evaluate which player I will use now.

Here's how I permenantly removed the MSN Music UK equivalent:

I deleted the following key from the registry:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\Services\MSN_Music_UK

FYI it contained the following values:

"FriendlyName"="MSN Music UK"
"Task1ButtonText"="MSN Music UK"
"Task1ButtonTip"="Click here to enter MSN Music, the UK's top music download site"
"Task2ButtonText"="Radio"
"Task2ButtonTip"="MSN Radio"
"Task3ButtonText"=""
"Task3ButtonTip"=""
"ImageLargeUrl"="http://img.od2.com/ServiceInfo/icons/MSN/wmp10serviceLarge.png"
"ImageSmallUrl"=""
"ImageMenuUrl"="http://img.od2.com/ServiceInfo/icons/MSN/wmp10service.png"
"ColorPlayer"="#B4CCEB"
"ColorPlayerText"="#FFFFFF"
"Type"=dword:00000001

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Q-Block

It's easy to uninstall MSN Music from Add/Remove Programs, but I don't imagine deleting these registry keys is going to give you access to Windowsmedia album reviews ... or am I mistaken? You are also going to be left with all their music stores program files on your hard drive.

> It's easy to uninstall MSN Music from Add/Remove Programs

It was never present on my Add/Remove Programs list otherwise I wouldn't of been so brutal.

> but I don't imagine deleting these registry keys is going to give you access to Windowsmedia album reviews

I never posted regarding album reviews; many forums point to this page regarding the removal of MSN Music - this is a one stop fix to cover that issue. I admit then that this posting is taking a liberty and is off topic.

> ... or am I mistaken?

You are probably right but then I wouldn't know - I'm not interested in that functionality.

> You are also going to be left with all their music stores program files on your hard drive.

An acceptable hazard as the files will become dormant, the loss of space I expect will be mediocre to the average user.

One thing I did forget to mention, using this method requires the denial of access of WiMP to the Domain name go.microsoft.com else MSN Music reinstate itself. *Another bodged 'fix'* :)