Help Playing Mp3's in WMplayer

I'm having problems playing any mp3's in my Windows Media Player, when I tell it to open an mp3' it just sits their with the message "Opening Media". I tried installing codecs and tried uninstalling them....any ideas or a way to check what codecs are currently being used, or direct me to the original windows media player ones? thanks

 

i believe i have fixed this...although there were some wierd things going on...like when i opened an mp3, it would play it, but it would freeze, but keep playing, but the progress bar woudnt go anywhere or anything in wmplayer for that matter, then i tried to open internet explorer....and it woudnt open! i tried going into task manager and deleting iexplore.exe in progress' and it woudnt close! I restarted...and everything **SEEMS** to be running fine... thanks...

 

ok now im getting mad, internet explorer just stops being able to be opened, it appears in task manager, but doesnt come up, i try to close it in task manager....doesnt work...i really need some help with this junk.

 

EDIT: bah...nvm I forgot that Xp anti-spy disables automatic codec downloading...re-enabled it, it downloaded fine and is working great. thanks for the help halo, I disabled a lot of useless codecs