i dislike WMP 11 aswell. i found WMP 10 works reasonably well for me, but there is afew freeware programs that run well. you could try well known winamp or a lesser know but just as good media player called QCD or the beta version of QMP (QCD with a media library) from
www.quinnware.com .
QCD is a standard music player. no ML but it has never ever given me any trouble (unless i try to use a bad plugin)
QMP is the beta release of QCD's successor. i have had a few minor problems (E,g certain Audio engineering programs wont run with it open) but nothing the ordinary user would have.
I use QCD and for the media library i use media monkey from
www.medimonkey.com and have tricked the library into thinking that QCD is winamp (as apparently QCD is based on old winamp code) You will have to fiddle to get it to add songs to QCD perfectly (sometimes it adds all the songs in the library, or all the songs in the library after the one ive selected. BUT apart from lacking a media library QCD is the best media player i have seen and used...
apple Itunes is also an alternative... personally i dont really like it but it has some good key features