Media Player + Vista

[Jotaru]

I have this uncontrollable rage caused by the fact that, even when closed, Windows Media Player continues to remain open until I task manager kill it. For a while it wasn't too bad, except sometimes it will open up multiple instances (if I think I closed it and open again, for example) and then logjams cpu / mem usage or is generally annoying (multiple songs playing at once?)

Basically it just pisses me off. Any way to fix that? I've googled around a bit and seen a lot of complaints about it.

That aside, any other pretty decent media players? I haven't tried itunes but not sure I want to. I also have winamp but it seems to be pretty damned slow when loading up as many songs as I have.

Edit: I should say that now I'm having instances where it remains in task manager and attempting to kill the process does absolutely nothing for me.

[The Stig]

VLC
or
Media Player Classic

For videos.

For music... well, I use winamp personally. Winamp "lite" or the one without the fancy skins, seems to load pretty fast for me.

[Pun]

I use VLC on vista for media, and foobar2000 for music.

[njitjk68]

Media Player Classic Home Cinema

Media Player Classic - Home Cinema - Video Player

[Caiyuo]

For video I've tried both VLC and MPC - Home Cinema as linked by njitjk68 and really much prefer MPC. Mainly used for movies and anime and MPC is significantly more dependable for smooth playback, especially for HD content. VLC was buggy as hell for me.

For audio I use both foobar2000 (light-weight, simple) and MediaMonkey when I'm not playing FFXI since it's a little heftier on my laptop.