Change Your Player

I've got two media players on my system, Winamp and Windows Media Player. How do I control which program launches when I put in an audio CD or double-click an MP3 file?

Bruce Kamikubo, Torrance, California

You can use Windows Explorer's Open With dialog box to change the player in which your audio files open automatically, but a better approach is to set the file associations in your media players' Preferences menus. To change your media file associations in Windows Explorer, right-click the file (Shift-right-click in Windows 98) and choose Open With. Select the application you want the file type to be associated with, check Always use this program to open this type of file (the exact wording varies based on your version of Windows), and click OK. Note that if you take the Windows Explorer route, you have to change both the Audio CD and the CD Audio settings to reset your CD audio player's file associations.

Alternatively, you can go right to the source: your media players' settings. These programs sometimes don't want to give up their file associations, so I recommend that you first go into the current default program and deselect the file type whose association you're changing, then go into your desired default program to select that file type. Here's how to reset associations in the current versions of four popular players.

RealOne Player: Select Tools, Preferences. Click Media Types in the left pane, and check the file types you want RealOne Player to play by default from the list on the right (uncheck the file types you don't want RealOne to play). For MP3 files, check or uncheck MP3 Audio. For CDs, change both Audio CD Playback and CD Audio.

Windows Media Player 8: Select Tools, Options. Click the File Types tab. For MP3s, the option you should check or uncheck is MP3 Format Sound. For CDs, it's CD Audio Track. (See FIGURE 1.)

Winamp: Press Ctrl-P. In the left panel, click File Types. In the 'Associated extensions' list, select or deselect the file types whose associations you want to change. For CDs, you need to select or deselect CDA, and also check or uncheck the Associate with audio CDs option. Click Close.

QuickTime: This player doesn't support CD audio, nor does it give up MP3 file associations easily. To force the issue, open Control Panel and double-click the QuickTime icon. In the QuickTime Settings dialog box, select File Type Associations from the drop-down menu. Uncheck Notify me if other applications modify these viewer associations and close the window. Then assign the file-association default in your desired player.

To return the MP3 association to QuickTime, open the QuickTime Settings dialog box as described above, select File Type Associations, and check the Internet file types category so that it's a full, black-on-white check mark (it will probably be grayed out when you open the window). Close the window.

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