I NEVER want to sync my device (Windows Media Player issue)

I hate Windows Media Player and never use it, but everytime I plug a USB stick, flash card, external hard drive or seemingly my little finger into a USB port the Windows Media Player sync dialogue pops up and has to be manually closed. I just want Windows Media Player to FOAD from my system (Vista 64), but I know that I can't safely uninstall it and after a while googling it seems the concensus is as follows:

80% of folk say there is nothing you can do, complete the wizard and let this hated piece of software that you never use leave hidden .xml files of MY information on every piece of flash memory that goes near my computer.

20% recommend registry hacks or otherwise unsafe methods to permanently break WMP and hopefully not too much else in the process.

Neither of which I'm keen on, but I've found someone recommending to disable WPDBusEnum aka Portable Device Enumerator Service. Is this last method safe? I do want windows to recognise when I plug in my WM phone and flash memory devices and work with them as before....just not launch the WMP sync dialogue. Or is there a better way of achieving this?

Right click WMP - Properties - Security - Change permissions to deny "read and execute"

No idea if it'll work in the way you want, but it's worth a try...

(although that is the nasty way of doing things...) :D

edit:@ or just change the autoplay settings :)

autoplay settings i thought?

Nope, not Autoplay settings. That's the little window that pops to ask me which bloatware element of Windows do I want to use with the media I've just plugged in (eg view files in Explorer, burn files using Windows, etc) isn't it? That's another irriation for me, because for a blank CD 'Burn CD using Imgburn' (or other installed program) cannot be set as default behaviour, only Windows components can be used. But at least it's possible to set 'Open in Explorer' or 'Do nothing' and have that retained for the future.

What I'm ranting about is the other pop-up that appears (every time I plug in a USB drive, I get both the Autoplay pop-up and a WMP pop-up). The WMP pop-up is a sync wizard type affair at the end of which a hidden file is left on the USB drive recording how I want to use that drive with WMP in future (and I think info relating to my WMP's media library)...quite a presumption on Microsoft's part there I feel. I don't want to leave a hidden .xml file on every USB stick that ever touches my PC, and I don't want WMP (a program I never use) popping up every time I use a USB port :censored::censored::censored:

@TAKTAK - good suggestion, but...I can change security properties of randomly selected processes in that way just fine, but for wmplayer.exe the option to deny is greyed out and permissions cannot be changed!! I think this is because WMP is (apparently) such a fundamental component of Vista that it (apparently) cannot be turned off for very good software engineering reasons, instead of simple anti-competitive behaviour. I think I'm going to have a good read about what else gets broken if I apply those registry hacks, hopefully a load of other stuff that I never use, in which case what harm can they do. And then I'll move to linux...



EDIT: I think I've done it (in the same way that I always think I've removed all file associations from WMP), having disabled Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service. I didn't find this recommended anywhere so it might break more stuff or otherwise not be as good as the registry hacks, but I guess at least I know what I've done and it can easily be enabled again.