Windows XP Home Edition: The Missing Manual

Windows Media Player

You can use Windows Media Player—one of the most useful freebie features of Windows XP—to play sounds, play digital movies, or tune in to Internet radio stations. It’s the Grand Central Station for digital music and movies, as well as the junction for your hard drive, CD player, CD burner, MP3 player, and the Internet (from which you can download new music files and movie clips).

It’s easy to see how excited Microsoft is about Version 8, since shortcuts connecting you to it are everywhere. It appears in two different Start-menu locations (including the Start→All Programs→Accessories→Entertainment menu) and on the Quick Launch toolbar. In any case, you can use a different method for opening Windows Media Player every other day.

Windows Media.com

The first time you launch Media Player, it connects to the Internet in order to bring you to http://WindowsMedia.com, a Web site dedicated to pop culture in all its commercial forms: rock albums, movies, music videos, and so on.

Tip

If you’d rather stifle Media Player’s innate urge to go online every time you open it, choose Tools→Options. (If you don’t see the Tools menu at all, press the Alt key, as described below.) Click the Player tab, turn off “Start player in Media Guide,” and then click OK.

The Lay of the Land

Before using Windows Media Player, you must first understand the peculiarities of its top edge and its left side.

The top edge, as you may have noticed, isn’t rectangular like most windows. Instead, it’s the shape ...