I reinstalled Windows Vista in order to add the current SP1 preview. As I was finished I started to tweak my system back into something familliar, and began stopping all the unnecesary services. As I stopped Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service I was hoping for wmpnscfg.exe to shut down. But it didn’t. And after every startup it kept popping back up. I checked msconfig and the run registry key. Nothing. Furthermore the file is protected by NTFS security from being deleted. After a little research I found the solution. In the windows registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\Preferences\HME the DisableDiscovery entry’s value can be set to 2 in order to stop it from running. You may wonder why 1 isn’t enough since usually that means TRUE. Well, ask Microsoft…