iTunes play automatically on startup?

Question

Is there a way to tell iTunes to start playing music when it opens? I already have the shortcut added to the Start Up folder in the start menu, and that is working fine and dandy. This machine (a Windows XP box) reboots randomly when Windows Updates are available, and I'd like to have the music start playing as soon as it reboots because it outputs to our office stereo.
This question is very similar to this one, except for Windows.

Solution 1

You can use a song name as an argument to the iTunes executable in your shortcut. Since you probably don't want the same song to play first every day, I'd make a small mp3 file and use it as the argument like so:

"C:\Program Files\iTunes\iTunes.exe" "C:\path\to\smallmp3\song.mp3"

of course, replace the path to iTunes and your mp3 appropriately as it will vary on your system.

You can grab some small mp3 sounds here or even create your own!

Solution 2

Jack, I believe this link might be of use to you. It should allow you to create VBS scripts that should launch playlists.

This collection of scripts can be used to control iTunes. You can use them from the command line, in a batch (command) file, or you can assign them to the special controls keys on a multimedia keyboard (such as "Play", "Next", or "Previous").

These scripts are free...

You could also set them as scheduled tasks, so a new playlist each hour for example.

Hope this helps

Comments

[Holmes]

Can you also use the path to a playlist instead of the path to a specific song ? if so...very cool.

[John T]

Most likely. What iTunes does is it will add the song argument to the library (if it isn't there already) and start playing it, so ideally you want a short mp3 (even 1 second of silence would be good), just to make it startup and start playing your songs in random.

[Glenn]

Great link, but I like the simplicity of John T's answer. Thanks, anyway!