Windows Media Player 12: How to permanently display the list pane

Solution if list pane is gone when changing movie:

This is a workaround from my part that I found helping when listpane is hidden after changing movies.

• add a mp3 file in top of your playlist then the movies you want to watch after that.
• with list pane and all files visible start your mp3 file and skip to next movie.
• list pane might be hidden again, just choose to show it again and hit mp3 file then a movie file.

FINALLY!  This solution works perfectly, and it's the only solution that appears to fix the original problem of the play list disappearing every time you change videos.

my favorite windows media player was version 9 something

have had it for a long long time and loved it on XP

wish I could keep that... but noooo windows must want user to have the latest 12

very disappointed at version 12 for this very issue

one other thing - can not choose background colour on the playlist

and another annoying thing - the horizontal scroll bar for the playback appears to be much smaller and a thinner target for my mouse, now it's just like a line-- hey i'm getting old i wish them scroll bars were as large as before.

really hoping the next windows media player is a step forward, rather than a step backward

or does anyone know how to install older version of windows media player?

And here I thought there was something wrong with my installation of Windows Media Player 12 since it wouldn't remember my preferred settings upon startup. I too want the list pane to show permanently when I open Media Player and when I load a new batch of videos. It's very annoying to have to click Show List Pane every time I open a new batch of videos to check if they're cued in the right order.

About the solution suggested by the moderator/Microsoft support personnel... It doesn't make sense to create a playlist for a set of videos I'm only going to watch once. I would have to delete the playlist after watching the videos and that's another hassle aside from creating the playlist in the first place.

I know this isn't related to the issue at hand, but I have another concern. I also want Media Player to not resize the window with the video played so I unchecked Fit player to video. The result is that Media Player stretches bigger than my screen. I can't see the right and bottom edges anymore. How do I make the window open maximized to fit my screen perfectly each and every time I play a video? I click maximize each and every time, but when I restart Media Player or open a new video, it goes back to being oversized. (Note: I don't mean full screen. I want the window with the list pane to launch maximized.) Basically, all I want is for Windows Media Player to remember how I configured it last and stick to it.

All of the normal options as mentioned above regarding Organize → Layout → etc. but to get this to work I also did the following:

→ play video in your playlist or start playing playlist to populate in sidebar

→ right-click anywhere on playing video

→ Video

→ make sure both are checked:

    √ Fit Player to Video on Resize

    √ Fit Player to Video (this has to be checked for this to work)

→ right-click and Show List

→ test by clicking through each selection.

If list closes, just close WMP 12 and re-open and it should work. Now if I could only get rid of that rating column.