The 30-Second Fix: Open the Playlist as Plain Text
What's actually happening here is the playlist file (.wpl, .zpl, or .asx) contains a reference to itself. Think of it like a hallway of mirrors — WMP tries to load the playlist, which tells it to load the same playlist again, forever. The player detects the loop and throws 0XC00D14BA.
Grab the playlist file from wherever you saved it — likely in your Music folder or on your desktop. Right-click it, pick Open with > Notepad. Look for any line that mentions the playlist's own filename. For example, if the file is party_mix.wpl, search for party_mix.wpl inside the file. If you spot it, delete that entire line. Save the file. Try playing it again.
This works because you're manually breaking the circular reference. WMP will then parse the rest of the playlist without hitting the loop. If you don't find a self-reference, skip to the next step.
The 5-Minute Fix: Hunt the Recursion with PowerShell
Sometimes the loop isn't obvious — the playlist might reference another playlist that references back. That's still a recursive chain, and WMP detects it across multiple files. The fix is to flatten the chain.
Open PowerShell as admin (right-click Start > Windows PowerShell (Admin)). Navigate to the folder with your playlists:
cd "$env:USERPROFILE\Music\Playlists"Run this to find all playlist files that reference other playlists:
Get-ChildItem -Filter *.wpl | Select-String -Pattern "<ref href="(.*)\.wpl""You'll see output like:
summer_hits.wpl: <ref href="party_mix.wpl"/>If summer_hits.wpl references party_mix.wpl, and party_mix.wpl references back, you've got a loop. The fix: open summer_hits.wpl in Notepad, remove the line referencing party_mix.wpl, and instead copy the actual tracks from party_mix.wpl directly into summer_hits.wpl. That breaks the chain without losing songs.
The 15+ Minute Fix: Rebuild the Library from Scratch
If the first two steps didn't work, your WMP library database itself has gone corrupt. The database stores metadata about each playlist, and a corrupted entry can cause phantom recursive references that aren't even visible in the file. This is rare — I've seen it maybe twice in ten years — but when it happens, the file-level fixes won't touch it.
Close WMP completely. Then delete the library database:
- Press Win+R, type
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Media Player, press Enter. - Delete everything in that folder. Yes, everything. WMP will rebuild it on next launch.
- Open WMP. It'll scan your Music folder again and rebuild the library from scratch.
- Now import your playlists again — but before importing, check each file with the Notepad method from step 1 to ensure no self-references remain.
The reason step 3 works is that a corrupt database can store a playlist reference that points to an already-deleted file, or store a hash collision that WMP misinterprets as a recursive pointer. Wiping the database forces a clean rebuild, and as long as your playlist files are clean, the error won't come back.
Why This Happens
Most people hit this error because they drag a playlist into itself inside WMP's UI, or because a media organizer app (like iTunes or MediaMonkey) exported a playlist that accidentally included a self-reference. WMP checks for recursion at load time — it's a safety feature to prevent infinite loops that would hang the player. The error code 0XC00D14BA is just its way of saying 'I see the loop, I'm not going there.'
One common trigger: you use a tool like Playlist Creator Pro that generates .wpl files by scanning folders. If the tool saves the output into the same folder it's scanning, you get a self-referencing mess. Always save generated playlists to a separate directory.
When to Give Up on WMP
If you're still stuck after the database rebuild, the playlist files themselves are probably beyond repair. Open them in Notepad and manually construct a new playlist by copying the <media src="..."/> lines into a fresh file. Save with a new name. That's as clean as it gets.
Or switch players. VLC handles recursive playlists gracefully — it just stops after one iteration and logs a warning. foobar2000 doesn't even parse .wpl files natively. Sometimes the simplest fix is to walk away from Windows Media Player entirely.