Windows Media Player and ".au" project blocks

[cnwtx]

I have encountered an error where Windows Media Player puts all of my ".au" (not ".aup") files into the player's library. When I try to play one, it says "Windows Media Player encountered an unknown error." and will not play it. Is there a way to keep the player form putting these in the library?
-Cliff

[waxcylinder]

.aup and .au files should be going nowhere near WMP. These files are Audacity's internal project structure. Onece you project is complete you need to export to WAV, MP3 or whatever to get a music file that will play on WMP

WC

[ObrienDave]

Check under Control Panel - Default Programs - Set Associations.
".au" is set to open in WMP by default.
Don't know where this comes from but, I'm changing mine.

[steve]

As waxcylinder has said, you should not mess with the .AU files in the _data folder. They are not ordinary audio files, they are Audacity data files that are used in the Audacity Project. If any of these data files are manually changed in any way there is a high probability that the entire project will be destroyed.

See here for more information about how Audacity handles files: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/File_Management_Tips

[cnwtx]

On my computer the ".au" extension was assigned to WMP, and changing this to not having a default program has appeared to fix the problem. When this problem was happening I was not trying to open or edit the file, but WMP (without me doing anything) automatically added it to the media library.
-Cliff

[Irish]

There is an issue here, in that the .au extension is used for unix-based audio files; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Au_file_format, hence the association in WMP.

The solution, as ObrienDave suggests, is to remove the association.

POL

[cnwtx]

Thanks, everyone, removing the file association has fixed the problem.
-Cliff