How do I stop this auto play audio from playing after I delete the email message that had it?

In this excerpt from
Answercast #50, I look at ways to stop annoying music playing out of an
email. It might be in another media program.

Email auto-play

So, if it’s auto-playing; if it’s truly auto-playing… then I actually
don’t know of a solution.

• Delete the email;

• Go out and empty your deleted mail folder;

• But my guess is it may not work.

It’s one of the reasons that I really, really, really dislike auto-play
audio.

Audio attachment

But one thing you said in this question makes me question whether or not
this is truly auto-play.

If you’ve got an attachment, in other words: if this .wav file actually
appears as an attachment in Hotmail… it didn’t auto-play. You had to click on
the attachment to get it to play.

The reason I’m suspecting that’s the case is because then deleting the
email would actually have no effect. The audio would continue to play.

What happens when you click on the attachment to open it… to play the
file is:

• Your computer actually fires up another program (probably Windows Media
  Player, maybe some other kind of media player);

• That then loads up the file and begins to play it.

• That program, the media player, is separate from your browser; it’s separate
  from your Hotmail.

So whatever happens in Hotmail, or in your browser, doesn’t effect what
happens in the media player.

Locate the media player

What you need to do then is:

• Go over to the media player program that has fired up and is playing this
  program;

• And hit the Stop button there;

• Or close that program.

Alt-tab is usually the quickest way to find out what other programs are
running in a situation like this.

I think you’ll find that, in addition to your browser, there probably is
something like Windows Media Player playing. Switch to it; close it and that
should stop the music from playing.