Keep it simple -- a replacement for Windows Media Player

I liked the old Windows Media Player: it worked, and it didn't look like a PowerPoint presentation made by a student who'd just taken LSD. All I want it to do is play music, not waste hard drive and screen space displaying album art. Sam Hardy

You probably have an old version of Windows Media Player 6.4 hidden on your hard drive. Search for mplayer2 and create a shortcut for it. I prefer Windows Media Player Classic 6.4, which looks the same but is actually a much more powerful open-source clone. You can download a copy complete with the K-Lite codec pack. The extra benefit is that this also plays .mp4 (H264) movies, a format Microsoft has either overlooked or can't be bothered to support. MPC is not a sophisticated music player but it does support .m3u audio playlists.

There are, of course, plenty of alternative music (rather than media) players. You could try CoolPlayer (http://coolplayer.sourceforge.net/), which is small, fast and open source, or foobar2000 (http://www.foobar2000.com/), which is freeware.