Use Microsoft Media Player for your Windows XP apps

Windows XP’s original multimedia player, Microsoft Media Player 5.1, still remains on the operating system despite various updates (Windows Media Player 11 is the most current version of Microsoft’s multimedia player). While Microsoft Media Player is pretty basic by today’s standards, it still serves a purpose.

Microsoft Media Player can still play a number of multimedia file types such as AVI, WMA, WMV, MID, and WAV, so you may want to be able to use it in situations where you don’t need the full power of Windows Media Player. To use Microsoft Media Player, add it to the SendTo menu by following these steps:

1) Press [Windows]R to open the Run dialog box.
2) Type SendTo in the Open box and click OK.
3) When the SendTo folder appears, right-click the folder, and select the New | Shortcut command.
4) When the Create Shortcut wizard appears, type C:\Windows\system32\Mplay32.exe /Play in the text box and click Next.
5) Name the shortcut Microsoft Media Player and then click Finish.

Now when you encounter an AVI, WMA, WMV, MID, or WAV file and you just want to sample it, you can right-click the file and select the SendTo | Microsoft Media Player command.