Help! Too many music players on the computer

Steve Benzian · Post by **Steve Benzian** » 24 Dec 2005 6:23 pm

Over the years I've accumulated so many music players on the computer that they fight with each other to play a CD or other media. Do you know how to make one the default? Which is the best to set as default. I have Real Player, Windows Media, Music match, the Apple Quick Time player, Media Center, I tunes, Creative Player, WinAmp and probably a few others lurking around someplace. I finally did uninstall Music Match.

Thanks for any suggestions....it seems that various players start up when retrieving media from the internet.[This message was edited by Steve Benzian on 24 December 2005 at 09:50 PM.]

Wiz Feinberg · Post by **Wiz Feinberg** » 24 Dec 2005 9:41 pm

Steve;
I sympathize with your problem of too many media players. Here is my suggestion.

Make Windows Media Player the default player for most media files that is recognizes. The main ones are .wav, .mp3, .mpeg, .wma, wmv, music CD playback, DVD playback, .avi, .mid and Microsoft Recorded TV Show.

Realplayer should be the default player for it's own proprietary filetypes, like .ra, .ram, .smil and whatever else it hold a claim to.

If you need to view .mov files you'll need Quicktime, but do not allow it to claim any other file types.

All media players have configuration options where you can select which file types are going to open in that player by default. In Windows Media Player, if you see the tool menu near the top click on Tools, then Options, then on the File Types tab and select all of the available file types. Click Apply and OK and you should be good to go.

If you can't see the Menubar, right click along the top bar on Media Player 9 or 10 and select Show Menu Bar. You can then choose to show, hide or auto hide the Menu Bar from the View > Menu Bar option flyouts.

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Bob "Wiz" Feinberg
Moderator of the SGF Computers Forum
Visit my Wiztunes Steel Guitar website at: http://www.wiztunes.com/
or my computer troubleshooting website: Wizcrafts Computer Services,
or my Webmaster Services webpage[This message was edited by Wiz Feinberg on 24 December 2005 at 09:43 PM.]

John Daugherty · Post by **John Daugherty** » 25 Dec 2005 6:09 am

I have used Media Player since I installed WinXP. It works good.
I once downloaded a program which automatically installed "Quicktime" along with the program I downloaded. After that, It took forever to download small mp3 soundclips from websites.
After uninstalling "Quicktime", My computer worked good again.
I think Media player is NOT very user friendly. I had to invest a lot of time to learn how to use some of the options. Now I have separate playlists for different categories. I learned a lot of new,not so proper words while looking for a fast forward button. The fast forward and rewind buttons would not allow me to advance to a particular spot in the song(maybe there is a fix for that ???). I found that you can drag the so called "seek" button (located between the forward and rewind buttons) to any spot in the song. Maybe this will help you at the expense of not learning a lot of new words that your mother didn't teach you.
At any rate, WIndows Media Player is my choice for a default media player. ...... JD

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www.phelpscountychoppers.com/steelguitar

Les Green · Post by **Les Green** » 25 Dec 2005 8:14 am

John, I agree with you 100%, and two ol' Missouri boys can't be wrong! I got rid of everything except Windows Media. I got tired of Real Player always making itself the default player and downloading files I didn't want.

Gary Ulinskas · Post by **Gary Ulinskas** » 25 Dec 2005 3:57 pm

Hi Steve;
see http://steelguitarforum.com/Forum12/HTML/001929.html

Tony Palmer · Post by **Tony Palmer** » 25 Dec 2005 5:55 pm

I found MusicMatch to be ok...also has a prigram to convert audio files, such as .wav to mp3...does Win Media Plyr?

Mark Vinbury · Post by **Mark Vinbury** » 26 Dec 2005 9:02 am

I'm a MusicMatch user too and find the quality of the sound more to my liking than Media Player.[This message was edited by Mark Vinbury on 26 December 2005 at 09:03 AM.]

Charlie McDonald · Post by **Charlie McDonald** » 28 Dec 2005 5:12 am

Quicktime gives me trouble too.
I use Musicmatch for capturing audio, and Roxio comes up to play internet files (and is a facility for burning cds).
WMP comes up to play videos. No real ego battles with this arrangement.

Steve Benzian · Post by **Steve Benzian** » 28 Dec 2005 6:59 am

I found Set Program Access and Defaults in the Add and Remove programs section of Contol Panel. Using Custom settings allows some choices but not sure if they really become the default or not. Doesn't really tell what the defaults are set to.

Thanks for the advice....!