Realplayer won't open

My operating system is Windows 10 Home.  When I first turned on my computer yesterday and my computer was booting up, my computer told me that I need to update Real Player, and it asked if I wanted to update Real Player now.  I clicked "yes" because I thought it would just take a matter of seconds or at least just a few minutes. I was in a hurry yesterday because I urgently needed to run some errands.  So after about 15 minutes, the RealPlayer update was still not completed, and I pressed control, alt, and delete simultaneously to re-start the re-booting of my computer before the RealPLayer update was complete.  When my computer finished re-booting up, the RealPlayer icon on the main screen of my computer was gone.  So I clicked on the Windows icon in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen and opened the menu, and I clicked on RealPlayer, but nothing happened.  RealPlayer won't open when I click on RealPlayer from the windows menu.  I have a menu on the toolbar at the bottom of my screen.  This menu on my toolbar also has the RealPlayer icon.  But RealPlayer does not open up when i click on the RealPlayer icon and click "Open RealPlayer".

 

How can I make it so that I can access RealPlayer and watch videos on RealPlayer again?

Edited by hamluis, 14 April 2024 - 09:37 AM.
Moved from W10 Discuss to AV/AM Apps - Hamluis.

It sounds as if the application may have been corrupted by interrupting its software update.
You may need to try to fully, cleanly uninstall it and then cleanly reinstall it.

https://customer.real.com/hc/en-us/articles/204040013-Uninstall-and-reinstall-RealPlayer-on-Windows

Having said that, there are much better alternatives these days.
See this:
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/realplayer-exists-still-suck/

Just one good alternative: VLC media player
https://www.videolan.org/vlc/

+MoxieMomma.....VLC is what Realplayer should be. You can even convert mp4 into mp3 using VLC.

Realplayer is no longer needed today and has always been junkware.

Yes, because according to an article on Realplayer, "Past versions of RealPlayer have been criticized for containing adware and spyware."

 

The article above also states: "PC World magazine named RealPlayer (1999 Version) as number 2 in its 2006 list "The 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time."

 

Additionally, the article points out: "In 2007, it placed RealPlayer, versions 1996–2004, at number 5 in its list The 20 Most Annoying Tech Products."

 

The said article even mentions: "US-CERT has issued multiple security advisories reporting defects which allowed remote sites to use RealPlayer to execute attack code."

 

I would recommend using alternatives like Foobar2000, Winamp, MusicBee, MediaMonkey, and Windows Media Player (2022).

 

The new Windows Media Player App (formerly Groove Music, currently Microsoft Zune Music) differs from the Windows 10 "classic" Media Player App.

 

You can find it on the Start Menu under the "M" letter, and its name is Media Player, unlike the Windows 10 Media Player, which is located under the "W" letter and, more specifically, under Accessories.

 

You can create a desktop shortcut to it, and reduce its default window size to a bare minimum.

 

Good luck!

By its very nature as a crowd-sourced site, Wikipedia is probably not the ideal source for authoritative, accurate and current information (beyond the basics) about computer software?

I rely more heavily on specific, tech-related sources for information, reviews and the like.
To wit, Winamp - although still around - is NOT the application it was before its original publishers dropped it way back in 2013.
See here:

https://www.ghacks.net/2023/04/13/surprise-the-new-winamp-player-is-web-based/

Foobar2000 is another outdated dinosaur.
MediaMonkey was pretty good back in the day, at least for music files, but it is neither open-source nor free (it uses freemium model).
AFAIK MusicBee only plays audio files, not video (& the OP specifically asked about video playback).

But "to each, his/her/their own".
And the consensus remains the same: dump Real Player.