Have you just purchased a multimedia keyboard with play, pause, stop, forward, and backward playback controls? If so, you'd probably find it useful to hook these keys into Winamp 5 so that no matter where you are in Windows, you can control your multimedia playback.

Depending on your multimedia keyboard, you may be able to hook your keyboard controls into Winamp, but it may take some experimenting. There are various plug-ins for Winamp that claim to hook your keyboard controls into Winamp, and you may have to try several out to find one that works with your keyboard.

To find this list of plug-ins, go to Winamp's webpage at http://www.winamp.com/. Next to the "Search" pull-down, select "Plug-ins", then type in "keyboard" in the appropriate box and press the "Go" button. Or, you can try the following link, which worked at the time this tip was written:

http://www.winamp.com/plugins/browse.php?
search=yes&filter=C&query=keyboard

Some notes:

If you are using Windows 2000 or XP, you should not try loading the "Multimedia Keyboard Control" plug-in. As one person noted (and it happened to me as well), if you use Windows XP, the control will not work and an error "Mediakey.vxd not found" will appear every time you use Winamp 5.

At one time I had a General Electric wireless multimedia keyboard, but I tried the "Logitech Multimedia Keyboard Plug-in" ... and it worked like a charm! Even if Winamp was not the currently selected window, I could jump around my Winamp 5 playlist with ease.

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