WMP stopped working on Vista

I am using Windows Vista 32-bit OS and past several days I cannot open Windows Media Player. Once I open WMP, about 5 seconds later I get an error message that WMP has stopped working and I am forced to close it. I have no idea what happened. It used to work just fine and now I can't play music, videos, etc. on WMP. Anyone has any suggestions how to fix this issue?

Tried downloading and installing the latest version of WMP? Besides there are way better media players out there imo, like KMPlayer.

Try downloading the newest WMP version from Microsoft.com and install it. If that doesn't work, you can install the K-Lite codec pack which comes with "Media Player Classic" which lets you watch your videos. In my opinion, it's better than WMP.

http://www.codecguide.com/

I run VLC instead of WMP. It handles all sorts of video formats.