Is there any way around this? It says my windows is not genuine!

lucky you , there's better freeware out there .

www.videolan.org/vlc/

Nope. If your copy is not genuine then you will not be able to download the latest updates to the media player (v. 11) and it will have disabled the previous version.

I did have a genuine version of windows with everything up to date. When my old hard drive was slowly dying, I mirrored everything onto a new hard drive but for some reason it wouldn't accept my windows as being genuine anymore, so I've had to improvise.

A way around it: ; Download Winamp instead. Free. I include screenshot of mine:

Winamp

It is also far less CPU intensive than the ultra heavy WMPlayer.

For movies etc you can either use this (with codecs) or, far simpler, use VLC

VLC link

I use Winamp for my music library and VLC to watch movies etc.

Or Real Player. All better than Media Player.

You will find you will have a lot of problems with updates and things with an ilegal copy of windows. You are not the only one. Most of us on here are in the same boat.

If you want you can legalise it for about 5,800 Baht.

Or, if you choose Winamp, you can choose a skin which doesn't clutter your desktop.

Or Real Player. All better than Media Player.

Media Player Classic is also good and free (open source) > SourceForge

absolutely.

It's very manageable, skin-able, and adaptable.

(I showed him the full spread to give him an idea of the options, etc... but yeah, it's cool you posted that, to show the versatility.)

You could put google to good use and still be able to run WMP 11 without your copy of windows being genuine. I agree with the recommendation of VLC, great player. Of course WMP's media library is the best of it's kind, and therefore no competition. I would not use real player.

I need windows media player to open and watch videos sent by my parents. I can't open the atached file without WMP.

or the k-lite codec mega pack

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/K_Lite..._Codec_Pack.htm

contains windows media player classic , real alternative - I find it a slightly better player than VLC

You will find you will have a lot of problems with updates and things with an ilegal copy of windows. You are not the only one. Most of us on here are in the same boat.

Speak for yourself.