When playing a movie in Internet Explorer the movie always opens in Windows Media Player. However, I would like to use another program to play these types of movies. How can I change the default player?

Windows Media Player is opening because this is set as the default player for the movie file format you are viewing. To change the player to view these movies, you will need to change the file association. For example, if you are viewing .AVI files you will need to change the file association for .AVI so the other program is used to view the movie, as opposed to Windows Media Player. However, before doing this you should check the other player supports playback of the movie files. To test, download the movie to your local computer and then open the movie file in the player. Visit the web page with the movie link, then right-click on the movie link and select ‘Save Target As’¦’. Save the movie on your computer (e.g. to the Windows desktop). Once the movie has finished downloading, open the player and then try to open the movie file. If the movie plays correctly, the player appears to support the movie file format. Therefore, you should be able to change the file association so all movie files of that file type open in the new player. Windows XP makes this process very easy: right-click on the movie file, and select ‘Open With’ (should another menu appear, select ‘Choose Program’). In the window that appears, select the program you wish to use to open the movies. If the program is not listed, click the ‘Browse’ button and select the program executable file. Once the program has been selected, tick the box ‘Always use the selected program to open this kind of file’ and click OK. The movie should open in the new program. Now, any time you open a file of the same file format, it will open in the new program.

However, you may be unable to save the movie to your computer, or you are only able to save a small file (e.g. 10 KB) with the movie name, but it is obviously not the movie given the small file size. In this situation the movie you are viewing is streaming media, meaning the movie data is streamed directly from a server to the player application (e.g. Windows Media Player). This means that you cannot save the movie to your local computer. To test whether the new player can play this type of movie, copy the address (URL) of the movie and paste the address into the player. The player should be able to open the URL and play the movie. If this works, you should be able to use the player to play the movie files. Next you will need to modify the file association to use the new player to open the movie file type. You should first check the player options to see whether there are any settings which will automatically associate with particular file types. For example, Windows Media Player has the ‘File Types’ tab in the Options which allows the user to select which file types you want Windows Media Player to play. If there is such a setting in your new player, it should be as simple as just ticking which file types you want to open in the player and clicking OK. However, should the player not have these options, you may need to manually modify the file association for the file type. To do this, open My Computer or Windows Explorer and go to the ‘Tools’ menu > ‘Folder Options’. In the window that appears, click the ‘File Types’ tab. Find and select the file type you wish to modify. Under ‘Details for ‘¦ extension’ you will see the program which is currently opening that file type. To change this program, click the ‘Change’ button. In the next window, select the program you want to open that file type (i.e. the new player). If the program is not listed click the ‘Browse’ button and locate the program’s file. Make sure ‘Always use the selected program to open this kind of file’ is ticked, and click OK. Back in the main Folder Options window, you should see the file type will now be opened using the newly selected program. Click OK to save the changes and close.