Unless the vender from which you bought your Windows XP Media Center Edition PC was generous and preloaded your machine with some music files, it comes out of the box with an empty My Music folder. So, before you can play any music on your MCE PC, you have to get some music into it. You can do this in one of three ways:

• You can copy your CDs to the hard drive, so you don't need to go find the CD and stick it back in the computer next time.
• You can transfer music files (WMA or MP3) from your old computer.
• You can download music files from the Internet.

You can also play music directly from CDs without copying them into your My Music folder.

You may also have boxes of audiotapes and vinyl albums, as well as even 8-track tapes and 45s. So how can you get this music into your MCE PC? You need to add MP3 recorder or WMA recorder software to your system. This software lets you plug your old audio equipment into the Audio In jacks on your sound card and record the analog media as an MP3 or WAM file. Hundreds of shareware and commercial software products can do this task. Check out Download.com and search under the Audio section for "Rippers and encoders."

If you're trying to record vinyl records, you can't connect the record player directly to your sound card. Instead, run the record player through a receiver that has LP or phono inputs and use one of the Tape Out jacks on the back of the receiver to connect to your MCE PC's sound card.