Advice for Windows Vista Users wishing to play sound samples

You may test this here
Quiz item


Users of Windows Vista may find it has been set up not to automatically play mp3 sound samples but only to allow their download. Try the sample link above.

You can overide this as follows

1.) Go to Control Panel, double-click "Default programs"

2.) Click "Associate a file type or protocol with a program" - it takes a few seconds to load the list.

3.) Double-click the file-type under the "name" column (such as ".mp3"). It is probably already showing something like "Windows Media Player", but it will not work.

4.) Now you'll have a list of "Recommended Programs". Double click the one you want. I chose "Windows Media Player" even though it was already "supposedly" set to that.

Now the sample should play (try the link above again).

 

Note Received from Jonathan Ramlow

Hi Len,

I'm not a big fan of Vista, but I think there's an easier way to make mp3 audio files readily accessible in Vista than going through the cumbersome Default Programs process you describe. If you have Quicktime (available as free download for Vista from www.apple.com/quicktime/) installed on your Vista machine AND you are using Mozilla Firefox as your default web browser, then any time you click an mp3 link like the one labeled "Quiz Item" Firefox will automatically play the audio file inside the browser, regardless of what it might say in the list of file associations in Default Programs.

I've been doing things this way for a long time in Windows XP, and I just tried it out on a Vista machine. It seems to work equally well in both. Some people like to download such files if they are freely available, and there are ways to do that in both XP and Vista, of course.