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[bebop]

I know this is sacriligious...but one of you music nuts must know how to fix this little problemo:

My daughter had been using wmp and upgraded to the newest one...and suddenly all her tunes are copy protected and she can't transfer them to her ipod....any ideas how to undo this?    She tried removing WMP and just using itunes (poor baby, she just has to learn the hard way) but wmp won't even uninstall.  Thanks   Bet

[SteveG]

all her tunes are copy protected and she can't transfer them to her ipod

What format are the tunes?

[bebop]

They are WMA's. 

[GHammer]

I think they know that DRM is a pain. But they need to get the music back.

This site has tools that may be useful to you:
http://www.kittysupport.com/

And these have info that may be useful:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;810422

This may be able to find the licenses and get files back to a playable state:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/drm/pluwiz.aspx

Lots of MSDN info:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnwmt/html/windows_media_drm_individualization_best_practices__plaq.asp


By the way, I was not aware that an iPod plays WMAs.

[JimH]

By the way, I was not aware that an iPod plays WMAs.

It doesn't, as far as I know.

[bebop]

Thanks for the info!  I will pass it on to my daughter. 

Nope, ipod doesn't play wma's, but she can't even get them converted, or transfered  to disk for backup.  Unfortunately many of them were from old cassettes that she had spent hours  on getting onto her little laptop - and thinking she could put them onto disc, she gave them away!!

[Alex B]

I guess she has accidentally enabled the WMA copy protection for her own recordings. It is not enabled by default, but people sometimes do that because they don't understand what the option means.

Can she still play the files with WMP? If yes, then the license is available on her laptop and she could burn the files with WMP or MC in regular Audio CD format. After that she could rip the CDs. At this time I would recommend using the common MP3 format and a high quality setting because the files will be compressed a second time. There is no way to avoid the additional quality loss, but using a higher bitrate will reduce that.

[hit_ny]

I guess she has accidentally enabled the WMA copy protection for her own recordings. It is not enabled by default, but people sometimes do that because they don't understand what the option means.

I have a feeling you are right here. Lots of ppl mistake WMA to have problems with protection, even with ones own presonally made copies.

Can she still play the files with WMP? If yes, then the license is available on her laptop and she could burn the files with WMP or MC in regular Audio CD format. After that she could rip the CDs. At this time I would recommend using the common MP3 format and a high quality setting because the files will be compressed a second time. There is no way to avoid the additional quality loss, but using a higher bitrate will reduce that.

If its possible to access the files, with the tools GHammer posted, why not disable copy protection on those WMAs ?

Otherwise you could use APE (or any other lossless codec) here to limit the loss. The idea being compression was already used (assuming ) to make the WMAs.

But you would need to convert to mp3 to play on the iPod.

[Krazykanuck]

Another possibility is if you use another browser as a default instead of IE. In my case I/we use firefox and after upgrades I had to remember to change the default to IE in order for my daughter to be able to play her music. After the song is played once you can change back and everything works fine. I don't remember what/if any error message was displyed.

The solution is to do what I did and convince your daughter that if she uses MC she will be much better off.

[bebop]

Thanks everyone!  Alex am going to pass this info on to her and hopefully she can geet it back.  She can play is (as far as I know).  Thanks again for the hlp, everyone!  Bet

[Mastiff]

The whole story is typical of Micro$oft's thinking these days  - they want to control everything you do with your media, even when you have bought the stuff legally! Anybody still wonder why I won't install anything media from MS if I can avoid it?

[JimH]

It isn't Microsoft.  It's the record labels and the movie studios.  I think the whole computer industry would be happy to have no DRM (except for software ).

Microsoft just wants to dominate the entertainment business.  Step one was making their audio and video formats the standards.