Get More Out of Windows Media Player

Using Windows Media Player to play music and watch videos is fairly self-explanatory--just install the program and open whatever file you want to play. But that's just the tip of the iceberg; from tweaking the DRM settings to adding functionality with Power Tools, there are more things that you need to know about Windows Media Player.

Required attention span: 15 minutes

Ingredients
Before you start, you'll need to gather these elements:

Windows Media Player
Windows Media Player Bonus Pack (optional)

Follow these simple steps:

• The first thing that you should do after installing Windows Media Player is have it search your hard drive for all of your existing files. Go to Tools . Search Computer for New Media, and click OK when the dialog box pops up. Now, every time you click the Media Library tab, you'll see all of the music on your computer that the program can play.

   

• As you might have heard, massive controversies surround the trading of music files on the Internet. Windows Media Player defaults to enabling something called Personal Rights Management, which prevents the WMA files that you've created from songs on CDs from being played on any computer besides your own. If you want the WMA files that you create to be playable on another computer, you need to disable this feature by going to Tools . Options . CD Audio and unchecking the box called Enable Personal Rights Management.
   

  If you use Napster, this is doubly important, unless you want to waste people's time by having them download files that they can't play.

   

• Creating playlists with Windows Media Player is a total hassle; rather than selecting lots of songs and just dragging them into a playlist window (the way you can in Winamp), you must press the Create New Playlist button and select each song individually from the All Audio, Album, Artist, or Genre sections. Press the Add Song To Playlist button and select the right playlist from the drop-down menu, or drag the song from the right pane over to the playlist icon on the left.

  This process is needlessly unwieldy, no matter how you slice it. Instead, we recommend opening the folders where you keep your music, selecting all the songs that you want while holding down the Control button, and then dragging them onto the playlist in the left pane. This process circumvents Windows Media Player's library system, and that's exactly why it's such a good idea. Alternatively, you can check out the last tip in this list, to find out how to use the Windows Media Player Bonus Pack to create playlists.

   

• If you share your computer with others and view material that they might find objectionable, you need something called the Most Recent Cleaner, available as part of the Windows Media Player Bonus Pack. After you've downloaded the bonus pack to your desktop, double-click mpbonus_net.exe, and the Bonus Pack will be installed (you'll need to be connected to the Internet while this happens). Go to C:Program FilesWindows Media 7 PowerToysPlayer, and double-click clearmru.exe every time you want to clear the list of the most recently used files.

   

• To add more playlist options, download and install the Windows Media Player Bonus Pack, unless you already did that in the last tip. Open Windows Media Player and click the Skin Chooser tab in the left pane. Select the PowerToys skin. Then, click the Apply Skin button on the upper left. If this doesn't cause the skin to be applied and the size of Windows Media Player to shrink, go to Tools . Options . Media Library and select Full Access under Other Application Access Rights. Click the Apply Skin button again. Now you'll be able to create any of the following playlists at the click of a button:

  
  
  
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