I've recently been trying to open multiple files, specifically mp3's in Itunes.  On Windows XP I remember that I could open the folder with the files in explorer, select all of the files, and right click and choose "play" to open them with Itunes (or hit enter, being that this was the default action associated with mp3 file types).  On my Vista machine I can do this the same, until I highlight more than 15 tracks at a time.  If I highlight more than 15, I seem to lose the default "play" option entirely in the right-click context menu (though apparently "Play with Windows Media Player" is still an option).  After doing some research it seems that Vista and 7 both have this limit built into explorer so nobody accidentally hits "enter" and prints a thousand pages, which is good but perhaps a simple "are you sure?" confirmation would be a more reasonable solution than removing the default option altogether.  After all, a person who actually wants to print a thousand different documents or open a thousand different audio files simultaneously (or 16) is put to the trouble of highlighting every 15-file segment individually, which can be tedious.

Is there a way for me to remove this bizarre limitation for future windows exploration?  I saw a fix for 7 that changed a registry value, but it didn't say whether it would work for Vista.  A GUI checkbox would be great, but if MS is reading this, you can keep that idea about a confirmation pop-up by default, like those used in all other cases of potential user self-sabotage.  Thank you.

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>Is there a way for me to remove this bizarre limitation for future windows exploration?

Hello Billy,

This limit is irrelevant because you don't want to open more than 15 music files at once.  That would mean 15+ instances of the player, all playing at the same time!  What you want is to "enqueue" a group of files for playback in one instance of a player, opening and playing one file at a time.  Whether or not that option is available depends entirely on your player(s), not on Vista.  Most do support this, either by drag and drop or via a "shell extension", a context menu entry for Windows Explorer.

I am able to enqueue large numbers of Mp3 files this way with Winamp on Vista.  With WMP on Vista, I just drag and drop the selected files from Explorer to WMP.   There is no 15 file limit.

I don't know about iTunes, but I would try drag and drop first.  If iTunes also has a shell extension option, it may be buried in a preference menu, or it may be an option during installation.  Take a look.

Doug M. in NJ

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