XP and ripped songs
 

I have a bunch of ripped songs that no longer play on my comp. They used to work, but they don't play now. It doesn't matter what prog I use, they don't start.
I know XP has some copyright use crap and all, but the same songs won't play on my win 98 laptop now too. Is there anyway to defeat this annoying problem?
I'm talking about several hundered songs here, so a fix would be nice.

more info needed, are the songs in MP3 format wmp format etc etc etc? What do you use to play them etc etc etc

If the songs are in WMP format it could be some kind of copy protection going on if also played with WMP, if using some other 3rd party player it might be a codec issue or something of that nature.

They are in mp3 format. I tried to play them in media player, real audio, sound forge. all to no avail.
Here's what I get
http://groups.msn.com/_Secure/0PQAWG...44554736466907

much the same with media player except it says"You need a license to perform the requested operation on this media file."
Can I do something regarding the codec?

Do you rip your own music? If so what program do you use?
I ripped a lot of MP3's and I've never had this problem, and I have XP. I've never downloaded an MP3 that wouldn't play either.

Also, how long ago did these MP3's start to not play? Did you install something new around that time?

I'm guessing you burned these songs to disc, reformatted, then put them back on you PC??? Maybe there was an error when you burned them to disc. That's just a guess because I'm not really sure if I'm right.

I had that problem. Windows Media Player, by default, enables DRM on songs you rip from CD and encode into WMA. Because they're copy protected, you'll experience the problem you have.

To turn off:

Tools | Options | Copy Music
Uncheck "Copy protect music"

You'll need to rip again but then you'll have the portability.

I ripped them with audio grabber. They have been on my hard drive the entire time. Never burned them and re-loaded them. They were ripped when I was using 98 and worked for a time when I loaded XP (dual operating system). When they quit playing on XP they would still work on 98.

I unchecked "Copy protect music". Are you sure I have to re-rip? Shit, I really don't want to do that....is there no fix for this? I'm talking about several hundered songs here.


Thanks all for your help.

did you happen to run some program at one time that did a scan of all your music files.. maybe it marked them all.. then later when you uninstalled the program it didn't remove the marks, and so you got useless files?

Unless someone has a great hack to defeat the DRM you'll need to rip them again.

If you're using Audiograbber you have to be careful of the same thing when using the WMA codec. Be sure to uncheck "packaged WMA" if you don't want the copy protection.

and sorry we can't let that here. Since you own the CD's just rerip, you would probably be done by now if you just did that to begin with.

Sucks but.. :-/

Ok dokie...time to re-rip. *sigh*
Thanks all.

Wait! Did you install windows media player 9? Don't rerip (real word?). You cannot uninstall media player 9, but an OS reinstall might be easier than reripping. Read up (google) about drm. Media player 9 monitors your usage.

(assuming this is correct) it is because of shit like this that I dont use WMP 9. still using 6.4 and only to watch video clips

there are other, better programs out there for listening to music, like coolplayer, winamp, etc

use the right tool for the job, my dad always said.