If you use the original release of Windows-95, you may need the current version of Windows Media Player to play Mpegs files. The update can be downloaded for free at http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com

Playing samples with Windows-95 or Windows-98

 If the song plays for a few seconds, stops, plays a few more seconds and stops, your system may be trying to play the song faster than it's coming in on your modem. You may be able to fix that by pausing playback for a minute or two, so the song can get more of a head start on playback. The quality of your connection can vary from minute to minute, and even a fast modem will have times that it runs well below it's capacity, due to line noise. .

Streaming Mpeg samples can be played using the Windows Media Player, if you have Windows-98, or the most current version of the Media player for Windows-95. The most current version can be downloaded for free from Microsoft's update website.

These instructions deal with making your system use the Windows Media Player. If you want to use a third-party player, such as Winamp (which is excellent), you will follow these same instructions, but will have to use the file names and locations of whatever third-party software you want to use.

Most of these third-party players will perform the steps below automatically, as part of their installation. Use these steps if they didnot do that, or if you wish to change to Media Player, or if your system for any other reason, won't recognize M3U as a registered file type.

1.) Get into Windows Explorer

2.) Click on "View"

3.) Click on "Folder Options"

4.) Click "File Types" tab

5.) Use down-arrow/PgDn to highlight "MP3 Audio".

You can speed this by first typing "M", to move down to file-types beginning with "M".

6.) Once you have highlighted "MP3 Audio", click on "Edit". Another dialog box will open, with another "Edit" button.

7.) Click the second "Edit" button, and another dialog box will open, showing "Application used to perform action"

8.) Underneath this, type "C:\Windows\Mplayer.exe". Alternately, it may be "C:\Windows\System\Mplayer.exe", or  "C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\mplayer2.exe". The last choice is best, if it exists on your system.

If you prefer, you can click the "Browse" button and browse for it, but make sure that you are viewing type "Program Files" or "All Files" if you do this..

These instructions assume that your Windows home directory is "C:\Windows" and that "Mplayer.exe" is located there.

You can do a "Find Files or Folders" to locate Mplayer.exe. It may also be in "C:\Windows\System"

This will set your system to use the Windows Media Player for playing MP3 files.

Samples are in streaming Mpeg format. This means that your system must recognize ".M3U" files as MP3 Playlists.

Repeat the steps 5 thru 8 above for file type ".M3U".

9.) If your system doesn't HAVE an entry in the list for "MP3 Playlists", you will have to cick "New Type" instead of "Edit", and

10.) "Description Of Type" = MP3 PlayLists (.m3u,.pls)

11.) "Content Type(MIME)" = audio/mpegurl

12.) "Default Extension For Content Type" = .m3u