Hi.

I am REALLY, REALLY confused about this one and would be extremely grateful for any advice anyone may be able to provide....

I have Windows Medial Player, Real One Player and Quicktime player on my pc. I have set Windows Medial Player as the default to open all file types, except of course those which are exclusive to the other two applications, e.g, .rm, .ra, etc.

There are some files on my pc which are driving me NUTS!!

They are audio files.
They have been downloaded from a variety of unrelated websites.
They are described as mp3's at all of the websites.
The name of the file (which appears under it's icon after it has been downloaded) has .mp3 at the end.
When the icon is right-clicked and 'Properties' is chosen, next to 'Type' it says 'MPEG Audio'.
Next to 'MS-DOS name' it says 'whatever it's called.MPG'

Even though I've set Windows Medial Player to open all files, the icons for the files are always those of Real Player.

Today I stumbled upon something very interesting, but also equally weird and frustrating! Up until now, I have used three different download managers to download these files, the one integrated with Netscape and two other third party programs. In each case, the results were as explained above.

HOWEVER, I decided to download one of these files in my old Real Download program, and lo and behold, the icon of the downloaded file was that of Windows Medial Player and both the extension at the end of the file name AND next to 'Type' stated Mp3!!!!

I then did a little test and downloaded the EXACT same file with my usual download manager and the file which was downloaded was back to the Real Player icon with three different types/extensions/names associated with it.

I am really sorry for this long post, but I feel like killing this idiot computer at the moment and wanted to make sure that I explained the problem as clearly as possible.

ANY IDEAS AT ALL???

Please help. Thank you!

i'm not exactly clear on what the problem is.

is it that the files work properly but the icon (the little picture) is different?

MP3 does stand for "MPEG Audio Layer
3" just incase you didn't know.

Check your settings in Real Player, you may have it set to always open audio/movie files in Real Player.

I depise Real Player and I never use it(must less install it), so I am not really sure what any of the newer versions have show in the settings.

Thanks for the replies!

'MP3 does stand for "MPEG Audio Layer 3" just incase you didn't know.'

So why is it that when I open Real Player and view the list of file types and which program they are associated with, 'Mp3' has a Windows Media Player icon next to it and 'MPEG Audio' has a Real Player icon next to it?

Mp3 and MPEG must be different somehow because the audio files on my pc which have the extension .Mp3 all have the WM Player icons and those that have the extension .MPEG all have the Real Player icons.

I have tried to change the settings so that Real Player ONLY opens Real files and WM Player opens ALL files, but the option in Real Player preferences is automatically set to open MPEG Audio in Real Player and this option cannot be changed (ie, removing the check mark next to 'MPEG Audio' does not make any difference). Is there any way of changing this option? Maybe in Windows Registry?

Ok, I'll try to explain the problem again....

Basically, there are Mp3 files on my pc which appear as Real Player icons. Yes, they work fine, but I want the icons of the files to be those of Windows Media Player and not Real Player.

I have set my Windows Medial Player to play ALL files types and Real Player to open only Real Media files, but the problem is still the same. Another thing I should mention is that when Real Player is completely removed from my pc, the icons change into the 'unassigned file' icons but just would not change into any other icons, e.g. WM Player or Quicktime.

As mentioned before, the puzzling thing is when I download one of these files from the Internet with Real Download, the icon appears as Windows Media Player instantly and the extension changes to .Mp3 and not .MPEG!!!!

I think a good thing to try would be to use an old download manager to see if maybe it would work in the same way Real Download did. Does anyone know of an OLD (maybe 1999/2000 version) FREEWARE, NON-SPYWARE, download manager which allows a list of downloads to be entered but can process them one at a time instaed of all together? But that still leaves the question over how to deal with the files that have ALREADY been downloaded!

Thanks.

(If there is anything else you need to know, please ask as I really want to solve this mystery.)

real player is a bitch, Dr. Zoid says that you need to kill Real Player and get something like Real Alternative (http://www.kazaa-lite.tk)

seems like a simple icon issue. i hate those.

there's someplace where you can change file associations and the icon associated with that. somewhere in the control panel... lets see. WarklanTD, you know? Ahh i found it with windows help.

1. On the desktop, double-click My Computer.
2. Click Tools, and then click Folder Options.
3. On the File Types tab, under Registered file types, scroll down and then click the MP3 (or whatever) file type.
4. Click Advanced, then click Change Icon.
5. Select your preferred icon (you can browse for the specific program you want and select that for it's icon)
Repeat steps 3 through 5 for each file type,
Hit ok, apply, close. should be done!

**INSERT**

I don't know why I didn't do this before! Here is a link to the type of file I am talking about:

http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~jedwards/K ... Miaow4.mp3

Now you can see for yourself EXACTLY what I mean. Please do the following.

1) Download this file

2) Look at the icon of the downloaded file (mine is a Real Player icon, but a 'no application' icon if Real Player is un-installed).

3) Right-click the icon, choose properties and see the filename at the top (mine is 'Miaow4.mp3').

4) See the 'Type' (mine is MPEG Audio).

5) See the MS-DOS name (mine is MIAOW4~1.MPG).

6) If you don't experience the same thing as described, then please let me know which download manager you are using and also anything else that may be solving the problem at your end.

I am really optimistic that this info will help you ALOT!!!!

Thanks.

(Thanks Zoid. It is just a figure of speech when I keep saying that I want the icons to be WM Player icons. This is just so that I don't have to write a whole long sentence each time about wanting the default player to be WM Player for these particular files. The files must open with WM Player also, not just have the WM Player icon. Anyway, try out the above.)

IT WORKED! IT WORKED! IT WORKED!

Want to know what I did?

Well, I searched for an old download manager and I found one called NetSpider.

I downloaded with it and the filed appeared as the Windows Medial Player icon!

YIPPPPPIIIIIEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wait just a minute though; I still need to know how to get my existing files to change into the WM Player icons.

It gets even better!

Since I downloaded NetSpider, all my other download managers are downloading the files which appear as Windows Media Player icons!

I don't know what NetSpider did to my pc, but not only did it work by itself, it also made my other download managers work like how I wanted them to!

wow, looks like you downloaded a bunch of crappy programs... sorry man.

if you wanted the files to open in a specific program you coulda done the same thing i wrote, just click a diff button. btw.