A reader writes, "Here's a tip for people who like to listen to audio CDs as they work: Buy headphones. When you're ready to listen, click the little yellow speaker in your Taskbar and select Mute to silence your system sounds and speakers temporarily. (You can deselect this setting at any time.) Plug your headphones in to your CD-ROM drive, pop in an audio CD, and enjoy the music without bothering anyone else. My teenage son does this all the time so he can listen to his rap music!"
(Note: You should find a volume control for your headphones on the outside of the CD-ROM drive.)
When you pop an audio CD or CD-ROM in your drive, does it start playing automatically? If so, then you have AutoPlay. This feature cuts one step out of your work--when you insert a CD in the drive, the system knows what to do. (Without AutoPlay, you'd have to display a CD's contents in an Explorer window, or in the case of an audio CD, launch the CD Player program yourself.)
The thing is, there may be times when you don't want AutoPlay to do its thing. You may, for instance, want to put an audio CD in the drive and listen to it later. You can turn off this function on a per-instance basis. Pop the CD in your CD-ROM drive, close the door, and hold down the Shift key for a few seconds (for about as long as it normally takes for AutoPlay to begin). Know what happens? Absolutely nothing.
In a previous tip, we showed you how to temporarily disable AutoPlay (assuming you have it), so that you can put an audio CD in your CD-ROM drive without playing it just yet: Pop the CD in your CD-ROM drive, close the door, and hold down the Shift key for as long as it normally takes for AutoPlay to kick in.
So now how do you play the CD when you're ready? You could press the eject button, and then slide the disc back in again to invoke your system's AutoPlay feature, but that's the labor-intensive way. Instead, open the My Computer window, right-click your CD-ROM drive (it should be labeled 'Audio CD'), and select Play.
A reader writes, "I'd like to change the program that plays my audio CDs from CD Player to, say CDMAX. I searched the Registry and found a few places where CD Player is referenced. What needs to be changed?"
Actually, you won't need to go anywhere near the Registry to make this change. Audio CD is one of the file types in the list of registered types. Just change its association to match the program you want to use to open audio CDs.
Inside any Explorer window, select View, Folder Options. Click the File Types tab, select Audio CD in the list of Registered file types, then click the Edit button. Select the Play action and click the Edit button. Under Application Used To Perform action, type the path of the program you'd like to use to play audio CDs, followed by a space and '/play'. For example, if you wanted use FlexiCD, you would type:
C:\WINDOWS\FlexiCD.exe /play
Click OK, click Close twice, and the change has been made. The next time you pop in an audio CD, your program of choice goes to work.