When you want to eject a CD from your CD-ROM drive, do you reach all the way over there and press the eject button? If that button is a ways away (for example, your tower is under your desk), you may be getting good and tired of making the stretch. Instead, use menu commands to eject that CD. In your My Computer or Explorer window, right-mouse click on your CD-ROM drive and select Eject. Phtooey--out comes the CD!
"Do you frequently play audio CDs on your computer? The CD Player has some neat programming options to enhance your listening experience. Just enter the title, artist, and song list for a particular CD, and the CD Player will remember this information every time you pop that CD into your CD-ROM drive. You can even select the exact songs you want to hear (or not) and the order in which you want to hear them. Today we'll show you how to enter a CD's information into the CD Player's memory (Later versions of CD Player can download info from the Internet). With an audio CD in your CD-ROM drive, open the CD Player by selecting Start|Programs|Accessories|Multimedia|CD Player. Click on the far left icon (if you don't see icons, select Toolbar under the View menu) and type the CD's Artist and Title. Next, enter the names of each track. Next to Track 01 type the name of the first track, click on Set Name, and so on, until you've entered the names of all the songs. Click on OK when you're finished. In our next
In the list of Available Tracks, select the first song you want to hear and click on Add. Select the next song, click on Add, and so on until your Play List is complete. Note, too, that you can select a song as many times as you'd like or not at all. When you're finished, click on OK. Click on the down arrow next to Track and you'll see your new play list. From now on, pressing the play button (or simply inserting the CD into your CD-ROM drive, if you have AutoPlay) plays the CD's songs in that order. In a future tip, we'll show you more of CD Player's customization options.
If you have an audio CD in your CD-ROM drive, the CD Player offers quite a few options for customizing how you listen. Pop in the CD, open the CD Player--select Start|Programs|Accessories|Multimedia|CD Player--and take a look at the three icons on the right side of the toolbar (if you don't see them, select Toolbar under View). These icons set the CD Player's approach to the Track list. Click on the left of these three icons if you'd like the CD Player to play the songs listed under Track in random order. The middle icon plays the tracks in order, but continuously. And the right button--this is a neat one--plays just a short intro to each track. Select this icon, click on the Play button, and the CD Player plays 10 seconds of the first song in the Track list, moves on to the next, and so on. It's a great option if you're looking for a particular track, or you're trying to get a feel for that CD.
A reader asks, "Is it possible to disable your system sounds in Windows 9x without disabling the sound card volume altogether, such as when listening to an audio CD?"
Actually, we did this exact thing while testing our last tip on changing the default audio CD player. (Who needs system sounds when you've got George Winston to entertain you?) If you simply use the volume control on your Taskbar, obviously you're going to end up with no sound at all. Instead, you need to switch to the No Sounds sound scheme. Open the Control Panel, double-click Sounds, and under Schemes, select No Sounds. Click OK, and your system is rendered speechless--except for your audio CD, that is!
(Note: To get your system sounds back, go back to the Sounds Properties dialog box, select a sound scheme, and click OK.)
If you listen to loads of audio CDs on your PC and don't want to take the time to input the song information from each into the CD Player, point your Web browser to
http://www.cddb.com
There, you'll find software that can download the contents of your CDs automatically from CDDB servers (provided you're online when you play the CD). Who knew?
A reader asks, "Is there a way to change the default Audio CD player to another program, instead of the Windows 9x CD Player?"
All you need to do is change the association of the Audio CD file type. (You and I don't think of it as a file type, but Windows does.) Open any Explorer window, select View, Options (or Folder Options), and click the File Types tab. In the list of Registered file types, scroll down and select Audio CD, then click the Edit button. Under Actions, select Play, then click Edit. In the box under Action Used to Perform Action, type the path of the program you'd like to use to play audio CDs, followed by a space and then
/play
So for example, the text in this box might read:
C:\WINDOWS\FlexiCD.exe /play
That's all there is to it. Click OK, click Close twice, and pop some good listening into your CD-ROM drive!