Windows XP [Electronic resources] : Visual Quickstart Guide, Second Edition

Chris Fehily

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Playing Music CDs

Playing a music CD on your PC isn't too different from playing it on a conventional CD player. You can play music while you're working with other programs.

You can set your CD (or DVD) drive's

AutoPlay options to make Windows detect various discs when you insert them.

To play a music CD:

1. Insert a music CD into your computer's CD drive.

2. If Media Player is open already, the CD starts playing automatically.

Figure 10.4 appears, select Play Audio CD; then click OK.

Figure 10.4. Normally, you'll want to play the music CD. You also can rip tracks to your hard drive (covered later), open a standard folder window with an icon for each song, or have the CD sit in the drive silently.

3. Click the Now Playing button on the Features taskbar to show artist, title, and track information, if you like (see the next section).

Tips

The buttons and slider in

Figure 10.5 control playback.

Figure 10.5. Media Player features the standard playback controls used on VCRs and other consumer toys. You can drag the Seek slider to move to a different place within the item that's playing.

If Media Player is minimized, you can use the mini-Player toolbar to perform basic playback functions. To turn on mini-mode, right-click an empty area on the Windows taskbar; then choose Toolbars > Windows Media Player (Figure 10.6 ).

Figure 10.6. When you've turned on mini-Player mode and minimized Media Player, the playback controls appear in the Windows taskbar.

Media Player plays through the playlist (Figure 10.7 ) in order, once, unless you turn on Shuffle (Play > Shuffle or Ctrl+H) to randomize the tracks or Repeat (Play > Repeat or Ctrl+T) to play them forever. If the playlist is hidden, choose View > Now Playing Options > Show Playlist.

Figure 10.7. The playlist lists the CD's track names and durations. Point to a track for pop-up information, or right-click a track for properties and related commands (such as skipping tracks). The drop-down menu at top (labeled with the album name) lets you change the playlist. Click the album art for detailed album information.

If Media Player doesn't play your CD automaticallyor if it plays something elsechoose your CD from the Quick Access menu (to the right of the Now Playing button on the taskbar).

To eject a CD, choose Play > Eject or press Ctrl+E. You also can use this command to open and close the CD tray.

If the music skips too much (assuming that your CD is clean and unscratched), try switching to analog playback: Choose Tools > Options > Devices tab; select your CD drive; click Properties; then choose Analog (below Playback). If that doesn't work, go back to Digital playback but check Use Error Correction this time.

To change the AutoPlay behavior of a CD or DVD drive:

1. On the Windows desktop, choose Start > My Computer.

2. Right-click the icon for the CD or DVD drive; then choose Properties > AutoPlay tab.

3. From the drop-down list, choose a disc type (Figure 10.8 ).

Figure 10.8. You can specify the action that Windows takes when you insert a specific type of disc, thus suppressing dialog boxes like Figure 10.4. Select the Prompt Me Each Time option if you don't want Windows to do the same thing each time. (Here, the drop-down list is hiding some actions.)

4. In the Actions section, choose Select an Action to Perform; then choose the action that you want Windows to take every time you insert that disc type.

5. Click OK.