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Media Player Classic stuck in fullscreen

posted: December 27, 2012

Media Player Classic has been my favourite movie player ever since I first encountered it, and it has done very little wrong during those years.

All of a sudden, though, it started playing movies in fullscreen - without being told to do so. As soon as a movie opens, the player starts in fullscreen mode, and pretty much the only thing you can do after that, is pause the movie, or exit the software. Fortunately, there is a solution...

Normally, you can toggle fullscreen mode with the Alt+Enter key combination, but in this particular situation the key combination does nothing.

I don't know whether the reason for this strange behaviour is either a bug or a feature that's gone slightly wrong, but apparently Media Player Classic sometimes turns on Direct3D fullscreen for no apparent reason. The solution then is, of course, to turn this setting back off again.

There are two ways of doing this: either by changing the option in Media Player Classic itself, or via a registry key.

  1. Via Media Player Classic
    Because Media Player Classic immediately starts in fullscreen, you need to start the player itself, instead of double-clicking a movie and waiting for the player to start.
    Go to the view menu option, and select options.
    There, go to the playback section, and select output.
    On the right side of the screen, a checkbox with the name "D3D Fullscreen" will be checked - uncheck this one, and click apply.
    Close Media Player Classic, and movies won't start up in fullscreen mode again.
  2. Via a registry key
    If for any reason the above does not work, you can change this behaviour via the registry.
    Locate "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Gabest\Media Player Classic\Settings".
    Look for the D3DFullScreen key.
    This will be set to 1 - change it to 0, and Media Player Classic won't start new movies in fullscreen.

Hope this helps, and enjoy your movies!

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