You double-click a playlist, Windows Media Player opens, and then it spits out 0XC00D1068 and refuses to play anything — annoying, especially when the file worked fine yesterday. Let's get it fixed.
Step 1: Confirm the file is actually a playlist
Right-click the file that's failing, choose Properties, and look at the Type of file line. If it says something like "Windows Media Player Playlist (.wpl)" or "M3U Playlist (.m3u)", you're in the right spot. If it says "Text Document" or just "File", the extension has been faked and WMP can't parse it. After you check, you should see either a real playlist type or a file type mismatch. If it's a mismatch, skip to Step 3.
Step 2: Open the playlist in a text editor
Right-click the playlist and choose Open with > Notepad. A valid .wpl file starts with something like this:
<?wpl version="1.0"?>
<smil>
<head>
<meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Windows Media Player 12.0"/>
</head>
<body>
<seq>
<media src="C:\Music\track01.mp3"/>
If you open the file and see HTML tags like <html>, <script>, or a bunch of JavaScript, that's the problem. Some web players let you export playlists wrapped in HTML, and WMP absolutely will not touch those. After opening, you should see either clean SMIL tags or obvious HTML junk. If it's HTML, close Notepad without saving and move to Step 3.
Step 3: Re-save as a real .wpl or .m3u file
You've got two options, and the second one is what I'd actually do.
- Open Windows Media Player. Drag the tracks you want into the Play pane on the right.
- Click the Save list button (or in WMP 12, click the arrow next to the Play tab and choose Save playlist as...).
- In the Save as type dropdown, pick Windows Media Playlist (*.wpl). This is the format WMP is happiest with.
- Give it a name, pick a location like
C:\Users\Public\Music\Playlists, and click Save.
After clicking Save, you should see the new .wpl file in the folder you chose, and double-clicking it should launch WMP and play the tracks immediately — no error code. If it still fails, the source files themselves are the problem, not the playlist. Check that each track actually exists at the path listed and plays on its own.
Alternative: use a plain .m3u file
If you want something that plays in WMP, VLC, foobar2000, and just about anything else, save as M3U Playlist (*.m3u) instead. It's plain text, one file path per line, and WMP 12 reads it without complaint as long as the paths are valid.
Why this works
The error code 0XC00D1068 is WMP's way of saying "I looked at this file and the format signature doesn't match anything I can parse." Windows Media Player is picky. It wants either a proper SMIL-based .wpl, a plain .m3u/.m3u8, an .asx, or a .wax/.wvx — and it checks the header bytes, not just the file extension. A playlist exported from Spotify, YouTube Music, or a random web tool often arrives as HTML, JSON, or XML that only pretends to be a playlist. WMP sees the header, doesn't recognize it, and bails out before it even reads the track list. Re-saving from inside WMP guarantees the header matches what WMP expects, and the file paths get written in the format WMP's parser likes.
Less common variations
The playlist is corrupt
A .wpl file can be structurally valid but truncated — maybe the machine lost power mid-write, or the file got cut off during a transfer. Open it in Notepad and scroll to the bottom. A healthy .wpl ends with:
</seq>
</body>
</smil>
</wpl>
If the end of the file is missing those closing tags, there's no repair worth doing. Rebuild the playlist by hand.
Paths use drive letters that don't exist anymore
This usually triggers a different error, but on some Windows 10 22H2 and Windows 11 systems it shows up as 0XC00D1068 if the entire playlist fails to validate. If you moved your music from D:\ to an external drive that now mounts as E:\, WMP can choke during the initial parse. Open the playlist in Notepad and search for the old drive letter. If you see D:\Music and your music is now on E:\, that's your bug.
Codec pack interference
Some third-party codec packs (looking at older versions of K-Lite and Combined Community Codec Pack) hook into WMP's parser and break playlist recognition. If you installed one of those recently, uninstall it, reboot, and test again. The error often vanishes. If you need the codecs, install them one at a time and test after each — the culprit is usually the DirectShow or WMP splitter component.
File is on a network share with an unsupported path
WMP has known problems reading playlists from UNC paths like \\NAS\Music\list.wpl when the path contains certain characters. Copy the playlist locally, test it, and if it works, the network path is the issue. Map the share to a drive letter instead of using the UNC path directly.
Prevention
- Don't export playlists from web services straight into WMP. They almost never produce a real .wpl. Download the tracks, then rebuild the playlist inside WMP.
- Keep music in one place. Moving files between drives breaks hard-coded paths. If you reorganize your library, rebuild the playlists.
- Use .m3u for portability. Save a copy of every important playlist as .m3u. It's the universal format, and if WMP ever acts up, VLC will read it without blinking.
- Back up your playlist folder.
C:\Users\<you>\Music\Playlistsis small. Copy it to OneDrive or a USB stick monthly and you'll never rebuild from scratch. - Skip codec packs unless you actually need them. Windows 10 and 11 ship with enough codecs for most media. Adding a pack for one obscure format usually causes more problems than it fixes.