Can I run 3 instances of WMP at the same time?

I want to run three instances of Windows Media Player at the same
time so that I can switch between three different play lists without
losing my place. Can I do this? I have Windows XP Professional SP3
and Windows Media Player 11.

If I can not do this with Windows Media Player, can I do it with a
different program? I need on that I can pause and unpause with
keyboard shortcuts. Thank you in advance for all replies.

 

For Windows XP, no. WMP will reuse an existing instance if you try to
load another instance of it.

I have heard of (but not tested) using the "run as" and picking another
account under which to run a separate instance of WMP. Obviously you
need to have as many Windows accounts as you want to run for multiple
instances of WMP: one instance of WMP per account using "run as". You
can use Fast User Switching if you don't need the multiple instances of
WMP all available on the same desktop but it sounds like you want them
all together on the same desktop which means running the other instances
of WMP under a different account. Since you are using different
accounts to run the same program, you'll need to consider permissions on
the files under different accounts, like if the files are under the
%userprofile% path for each account instead of in some common folder
accessible by all accounts. Alternatively, you can run separate
instances of WMP by running it inside multiple sandboxes (e.g.,
Sandboxie but requires the payware version to create separate sandbox
containers) or in separate virtual machines (but you have to install an
OS in each VM).

VideoLAN's VLC will do what you want regarding having multiple instances
of it concurrently loaded with different media content. As for
shortcuts, read http://wiki.videolan.org/Hotkeys to see if it has all
the keyboard shortcuts you want (it's one of the few apps where I've
never bothered using keyboard shortcuts so I'm not familiar with them).