windows media player

Did you say you can play them with other media players?

I can use real player for certain web sites, but not a lot support real player.

If you have downloaded all the relevant codecs and re-installed WMP and have all the settings correct all I can say is either the files you are tying to view dont support WMP or your firewall/pop-up blocker is stopping the files loading.

is this WMP10 ?
did you 'upgrade' via an update ?

if so, can you remove the update, and go back to the version that WAS working ?

You know I'm not sure how I would just take away the update.
All I know is it doesn't work since I did the destructive recovery. I don't know if I had another version of the player before or not.
I tried uninstalling it and it won't let me. Everytime I want to download another version or reinstall this version it tells me that I already have the latest version.

If you have upgraded from another version go to your control pannel >add remove programs > Windows Media Player 10 > Change/Remove It will aks you are you sure you want to roll back the the previous version, so select yes and let it do its stuff!

:( It doesn't give me the option to go back to a previous version.

What does it give you the option to do then?

just remove it totally then .........

NOW re-install ?