Listen to the music you want to, in the order you want.

Tired of droning radio DJs and their dodgy playlists? Then why not create your own? You’ve probably got enough Cds for a healthy playlist, and if you haven’t already copied them to your hard drive then you can start by opening Windows Media Player, clicking Rip, and putting the CD in the drive. It will copy your tracks over automatically.

Left to its own devices, Media Player will copy files using Microsoft’s WMA file format. It’s good for preserving audio quality, but some players – including iPods – don’t support it. For something that’s sure to work on every player, click the arrow underneath the Rip button and choose Format > MP3. In the same menu, choose Bit Rate > 192kbps. This raises the sound quality of your tracks, and while they take up more storage space, it will only make a difference if you have a tiny player.

Next, plug in your player. Click through the set-up questions and the player will show up on the right-hand side of your music library – drag songs into here to create your line-up. Pick tracks from the options in the left-hand menu or using the search box in the top right. You can knock up an instant Greatest Hits by clicking underneath the Library button and choosing Create Auto Playlist. Choose the top click here link and pick one of the Play Count entries to harvest the tunes you listen to the most.

The My Rating entry is smarter, sorting by the star rating attached to each tune, but you’ve either got to set these yourself or use Media Player regularly so it can assign them automatically. Alternatively, click Shuffle Music for a random selection.

1. Ripping good fun

The first step is to get your music from shiny CD to capacious hard drive. Select Rip in the player’s toolbar, stick your favourite album in the drive and it will automatically begin copying the music to your My Music folder.

2. Playing for keeps

Now create yourself a playlist with your favourite tracks. Click Create Playlist, enter an appropriate name and your empty list will appear in the right-hand pane. Drag and drop songs, then click Save Playlist.

3. Syncing feeling

Click the Sync tab and connect your MP3 player. Media Player can sync with almost any USB storage device. You may get the option to name the device, then just drag songs, albums or playlists to the list and hit Sync to copy them across.

4. Missing hits

You can buy tracks direct from within the player. Click under the Media Guide button to choose an online music store, and have your credit card handy for registration.

Mike Channell contributes to Windows Vista: The Official Magazine, and is works on PC Format.

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