Lots of people have probs with this program. I certainly don't recommend using it unless you are an advanced user. You unknowingly disabled a local service needed for Windows Media player for update checks so probably not the fault of the program. I would suggest you rollback or restore previous configuration, but if it has been a year then likely won't work.
Otherwise, uninstall program and upgrade to WMP10 if you haven't done so. Visit the Theoretica website for more support:
http://www.theorica.net/safexp.htm