I have been looking for an alarm clock software for Windows to wake me up every morning recently. However, I can’t find a good one which: 1. is freeware; 2. can play songs randomly; 3. can repeat every weekday (Monday to Friday); 4. is reliable. Finally, I come up with a free solution by using the Windows XP built-in functions and a free utility…The recipe is as follow:

1. WinAmp
2. CLAmp
3. Scheduled Tasks (Windows built-in)
4. Notepad (Windows built-in)

First of all, you need WinAmp installed (don’t you have it installed already?). Then, you need CLAmp which can control WinAmp by command line.

After you have both of them installed (you can place the clamp.exe to anywhere you like), you can then start creating your own playlist (include the songs that will wake you up!). Save the playlist as a .m3u file (mp3 playlist). the write a batch file - a plain text file with a .bat extension. The content should be: (clamp.exe is being installed in c:\Program Files\Winamp\ in the following example, the playlist is “d:\alarm.m3u”)

@”c:Program Files\\Winamp\\clamp.exe” /start
@”c:Program Files\\Winamp\\clamp.exe” /plclear
@”c:Program Files\\Winamp\\clamp.exe” /pladd “d:alarm.m3u” /random on /play

Finally, add a scheduled task by draging the batch file to the scheduled task window. Then double click the task created (to view its properties). Finally, you can set the time of the alarm, make it repeat weekly, and check the weekdays you want the alarm sounds on. Click the OK button. Woo! You made it! You can test the alarm by selecting the “run” command after right-clicking the the task icon.