Can't get Itunes to play all the music in folder.

Question

I have Vista and just put iTunes on it to use instead of Media Player. My problem is if I select more then 10 files to play or just hit the "Play All" button in the folder the files open in Media Player and not iTunes. These are .mp3 files which I have associated to iTunes. If I open a single file it opens in iTunes and I am not given a warning that iTunes is the default player. Can anyone help me figure out how to make iTunes play all the music I select without having to open it and import it each time. I have over 300 CDs on the computer and some times I just want to go to the folder in explorer and launch all the music from that CD.

Answer 1

I think you just need to figure out the tricks to getting the album you want up in iTunes. It is very easy actually.
First, if you turn on View Browser (you can't be in the cover flow view to see the browser) you get three windows at the top of your library: Genre, Artist, Album. When you pick anything from any of those windows, it immediately narrows down the library view to things that meet that choice (e.g. if you pick U2 then the library will only show tracks with Artist = U2.
In addition, those three boxes will narrow down to only show what fits with whatever you type in the search field. Meaning, normally if you have thousands of songs and hundreds of artists, scrolling through the little artist box to find that one artist or the album box to find that one album is kind of tedious. But say you want to listen to The Clash's "London Calling". In the search box you can just type in Clash or London (or both) and the three Browser boxes (and your library view) will quickly narrow down to only tracks where Clash and London appear. Likely the Album window will now only show a few choices. Click the "London Calling" one and your library now only shows that album. Now you can play just that album. Of course it sounds like more when you type it all out, but to open iTunes, type "Clash London" then click on the London Calling album takes all of about three seconds, likely quicker than it is to dig through folders in your hard drive.
Sorry, but I don't have any answers for your Windows association problem with trying to load more than 10 tracks, but I think you may find the above method to be much easier to navigate.
Patrick