Can't get Winamp to work
 

In visiting favorite websites, I sometimes like to listen to live or archived messages. When I click on their link to play the desired message, Winampe wants to download a file, in this case, current.asp. Whether I save it to disk or open it, when Winamp opens up, it won't play anything for me. I see Current.asp displayed but it won't play. I click the play arrow in vain. I have Windows 98 with plenty of disk space and 192MB ram. :(

Winamp shouldn't try to open an .asp file. An ASP (active server page) is a dynamic website, similar to .php. Try opening the .asp file in your browser, not Winamp.

To do this, de-associate the file with Winamp. Go to Winamp, press Ctrl + P-->File Types, and disselect .asp.

Could you post a link to the webpage?

I checked file types and .asp is not in the list of file types supported by Winamp. What I described is what happens when I click the link in the website that is supposed to start the message playing. The file download box opens with its "Some files can harm your computer" warning. I see a flash right before then but it's gone before I can see what it is. The website is jsmi.org. On the Home page you will see a link "Click here to view this week's webcast in Windows Media Player". And that's another thing I don't understand. I uninstalled Winamp last week just to see what would happen and when I clicked a link at another website that was supposed to run with Windows Media Player, I got an error message saying it could not find Winamp.exe. Anyone have any idea why you expect Peter and get Paul? what could the connection be? Thanks.

Could you post a link?

http://jsmi.org

It's an .ASX playlist, not asp
http://www.jsmi.org/webcast/current.asx

ASX is a proprietry Microsoft playlist format
and is not natively supported by Winamp.

As to how you managed to manually associate Winamp with ASX playlists is a different matter.

Right click the above link,
select "save target as" (IE), or "save link to disk" (mozilla)
Save the small ASX file to your hard drive
then open it in Notepad to reveal the actual stream url:

Copy and paste the following url into Winamp's Add/Open URL box:
mms://jsmiwm.webcastcenter.com/jsmi/jsmi_021604.wmv

Alternatively, make WMP the default ASX Player again by selecting it in:
WMP > Tools > Options > File Types
Windows Media File (asf, asx, wmx, etc etc).

To DJ Egg:

When I click the URL link in your post to this forum, WMP opens and the webcast begins and plays good as I could ask.
I found the Open URL box and entered the link as you suggested, and now I can see that link sitting in the upper right hand corner in Winamp. But still nothing is happening, stil no response to the play button.

I double-checked and it is an .asf file that Winamp wants to download or open. I tried to open the webcast directly from jsmi.org just now and it still doing the same.
www.jsmi.org

I made the changes you suggested in WMP and now the broadcast is opening just fine from the website.
Thanks so much.