Be A Media Player
Build up a music library with Windows Media Player 7.Lenny Bailes
Microsoft's new Windows Media Player 7 (currently in beta) can catalog streaming audio and video, Internet radio stations, and downloaded multimedia files in one convenient place. To install the current technical preview, you must be running Internet Explorer 5.0 under Windows 98. Microsoft also issues stern warnings predicting doom and gloom when you install the software, so if you have valuable data on your hard drive, back it up before you install Windows Media Player. (One important note: After you download and install the beta version of this software, you might see an "installation failure" error message. This might just be a bug; If you click OK and then double-click the icon the program places on your desktop, the program may still work as advertised.)
When you open Windows Media Player for the first time, it offers to build an integrated media library by searching your hard disk for supported audio and video files. You don't have to do this immediately; just type Ctrl-E to build the library any time the program is running. By default, the media search will exclude the small.wav audio files and help-file videos stored in your Windows system folders, but you may still pick up an annoying number of these in application directories. To avoid this, choose a specific drive letter from the "Search for media in" list. If all your media files are stored under one folder, click the Browse button next to "Beginning in" and select the folder in the Browse for Folder dialog. Then click the Start Search button.
After Windows Media Player completes its search, select the Media Library tab to see the list of playable files on your hard disk. To automatically play back all tracks under an album listing, artist, or media category, double-click the entry for the category in the left display pane.
By default, when you start Windows Media Player it opens to the Media Guide tab for Internet browsing. But you can change the initial display to the Media Library, CD Audio, or any other tab. Choose Tools, Options, click the Player tab and remove the checkmark next to "Start Player in Media Guide." From now on, Windows Media Player will open to the tab that was selected the last time you closed it.