why does enworld want me to run Windows Media 6.4 Player Shim

[Janx]

I'm running Win XP Home & IE7

Every page on enworld results in a prompt to install Windows Media 6.4 Player Shim. What's up with that?

In any case, I ain't doing it. I just wonder what's causing it.

 

[Michael Morris]

Your guess is as good as mine. I honestly don't know what's causing that and I've looked at the source code a couple dozen times for it.

 

[Bront]

I would guess it's windows, or perhaps some kind of spyware. Try a spyware scaner.

There was also a MS patch for that reciently, that may fix the issue (or have caused the issue)

 

[cybertalus]

From what I'm reading it appears to be a side effect of enhanced security in IE7. Google lead me to a thread on Ars Technica where they're discussing the same thing. There's some Grandma-unfriendly language there, so I'm not gonna provide a link.

What I gathered from the discussion though is that IE7 is sometimes (but not always) asking users to verify usage of plugins they've already installed. It also seems to be asking on websites which don't obviously seem to be offering content related to the plugin being verified.

Poking around some more I came across this link which discusses the problem in a some degree of technical detail and provides suggested server side fixes.