Hi all,
I've got a bit of a dilemma on my hands. Over the years I've backed up every CD I have onto my hard drive. I've always used media player...
I work in IT, and about a year ago my PC blew up, so in the mean time I've been using borrowed systems, or temporary low spec builds but with my old hard drive plugged in as a slave.
My problem is this:
I've now built myself a new PC, and put my HDD in it, BUT: Windows media player won't let me restore my licences because I've done it more than four times.
All my music (5gb!) is in .wma format which means I can't play it with anything else either! (not that I've found)
Help!!??!?!
I've emailed microsoft repeatedly in various tones from: "please can I have some help?" to "YOU ARE IN BREACH OF MY DAMN RIGHTS I WANT MY MUSIC!"
I've yet to get a single reply!

Is there any way of disabling the WMP licence manager? Failing that is there any way of copying them into a usable format?

Please help anyone!

A news group listed under microsoft.public.windowsmedia may be useful to try. Or the MS interface here.

Yes, there are ways of recovering your music but I would try sorting the licensing before anything else.

Hope this gives some help, tec

Edit:

I can't wait to read useless, irrelevant and unhelpful posts.

at first i wanted to laught a little ... but i really feel sorry for you ... this is very sad indeed ... google for "free me" (remove the space between both) wma ...

i don't know if this is the right time to say that this happens cause you trusted microsoft ... and is good example of why i (we?) don't like WMA.

wow! ROFL!

Can't believe you work in IT!
Sorry couldn't resist!

There are so many brilliant audio formats out there and you've met your doom.
Choosen to licence your own files - can't believe you did that.
Using a proprietary Microsoft format you could have at least disabled to licence your own music option.

Well I guess unless hacking you won't get your files back.

Feel sorry for you ..

Maybe you will learn something from this experience...

hmm....there are programmes that can help you...but it transcodes from wma to wma...search for unf--- on google.

mods, if this is against rules, please pm me and ill remove it.

and remember, if you're going to use wma, remember to uncheck the protect music box.

Next time, untick: Tools -> Options -> Rip Music -> Copy protect music

Call Microsoft support, and bitch, bitch, bitch...They might actually help you.

Also, do as others have suggested and post in the "official" MS support newsgroups. You might get help there.

Better yet, don't use WMA

best idea ive heard so far

Since these now-unusable WMAs were just backups, use this as an opportunity to re-rip and encode into a REAL format like Vorbis. You DO have the original CDs, don't you? (If not then I don't feel so sorry because you lost something you don't really own).

what if somebody stole them? he stills has the rights to listen to them

you make a good case kwanbis

As I recall, freeme just removes the protection, whereas unf--- transcodes, so freeme would be the most helpful.

yea, freeme

freeme only works for version 2 protected, not 1 which i think is what his files use.

sorry to hear of your situation, Q-Puppy!

i don't quite understand why you used that crappy compression format [read WMA] at first place, and that too with the copy protection option set to on... you're better off with Ogg Vorbis, MP3, or Musepack.

all said and done, i hope 'freeme' bails you out!

good luck, mate.

boomslang.

P.S. like mithrandir said, i'd suggest you dump the WMA format, and re-rip the CDs to some hi-funda format like Vorbis/Musepack [if, of couse, you still have access to the discs]. This might sound like a lot of work [compressed audio amounting to 5 gigs must be a damn big collection], but believe me, it's worth the effort.

i have right now, 18GB of MP3 on my laptop, and 68 more on my PC ... it doesn't takes that much

Yea 5 gigs isnt alot.. I have about 35 full CD's averaging 160kbit, and they take 3.1 gigs..

If you still have the CD's it wouldnt be too hard to just re-rip them.. You can set WMP 9 or 10, to start ripping on insert, and it can pop the cd out when its done.. it can be very easy and quick.

Next time make sure to uncheck that box "Copy Protect my music"

Very easy and quick indeed, but the result can contain glitches (unlike other, free rippers) and is locked in an unpublished format (unlike other, open formats). So if I were him I wouldn't make the same painful mistake twice and actually make my choice before encoding this time.

For the original poster - well I don't know whether microsoft can/will help you with your license lock - but in my experience as a developer, either they don't respond or they do and can't fix the bugs. A few years ago I found 3-4 bugs in their compiler, and I see the latest versions still contain them. So it seems they don't care about their customers unless duty (ie: mass marketing) calls. Sorry.

Edit:
- As dax said, with the current tools and current cpu speeds it should be very quick to re-encode a collection of a size like yours.
- Compiler I mentioned was the one in VC++ from versions 4 and up.

now that's a monster of a collection.

i'm not much into music... 5 gigs is quite a lot for me.

cheers.

boomslang.

love music

Quirky puppy, Can't believe you didn't do that. WMA is as harmless as MP3 if you disabled Copy Protection.

WMA8 adds Copy Protection by Default.
WMP9 warns you about this.
WMP10 doesn't add Copy Protection by Default.

A couple of years ago I regularly lurked on the Media Jukebox forums, and I remember a guy there who had about 700GB of MP3s.

I only have about 30GB of MP3s. 100% legal, though...

Doesn't make the WMA standard very good audio format anyway according to blind group listening tests.

And who knows what other surprising things can be expected in the future for WM users... Some nice automatic update and *blingg* - you experience another surprise.
I don't see any reason anyway to use this average quality audio/video format and support Microsoft's control over media systems and -usage.

It's been frightening enough to see MS tries in different international broadcasting conferences/exhibitions to push its tentacles *everywhere*. The more it pushes, the more negative I've become towards MS. Not any single company should have too much power and control in media business.
Fortunately it seems now that the rest of the industry is getting their acts together, especially what comes to HDTV.

Anyway, to get back on-topic: There are several in many ways much better alternatives to WM audio with portable/mobile support like Lame encoded MP3s, MPEG-4 AAC, Vorbis.
Musepack is also great at mid/high bitrates although the hw support and further development is not advancing much currently.

That's just conjecture at this point. And in all honesty (and keep in mind that I am NO submissive follow-the-law-at-all-times person) if someone steals a CD from you, you don't have the right to listen to it anymore. I know that sounds very stupid and asinine but that's what theft is: someone stole the media AND the license. If you didn't lose the license then the theft act would be considered less sinister...but that's not the reality. Theft is evil.

Now of course if someone stole my CDs I wouldn't go deleting my encoded files but that doesn't mean I would be in the legal clear. I'd have to file a claim with my homeowner's policy to get my stuff back.

Whenever someone talks about making "backups" I take that as a codeword for "making a copy of something that I don't really own". I consider my physical CDs to be a much more secure entity than a bunch of files on a hard drive. Making WMAs as "backups" sounds ridiculous when you think about it.

my experience is that they disabled drm2 (or whatever freeme was cracking) as quickly as possible and progressed to whatever they called their next generation. thankfully i didn't find this out AFTER i bought a track... (or encoded for that matter)

edit: http://modular.fas.harvard.edu/edu/Fall200.../ecc/ms-drm.htm

I copy some of my CD's using WMP 9 to .wma 192kbps just for the convenience of playing them on my computer - very handy, and the copying is done in a flash. I also use CDex on-the-fly encoding to .ogg Q6 for the very same reason.
When listening to music on a PC, with PC speakers, the sound quality don't have to be a 100% perfect hi-fi experience. If It sounds good, then it's good enough for PC.
But for a serious backup of CD's that you really treasure - go lossless. But as someone already mentioned, the best backup is the CD it self. It would last a lifetime if treated right.

to join the ot post line (as the original question seems to be answered and beaten to death) - there are enough examples reported on this board and on the net (and also to my own experience) that even under the best possible storage environment acessable to average users, CDs can die pretty soon, depending on manufacturer and pure luck.
a lifetime of duration is surly a bit to optimistic in most cases.

700 gigs of MP3s = 751619276800 bytes of audio data!

i'm really out of adjectives for this one...!

boomslang.

Ladies and Gents,

Many thanx for all your thoughts and advise on the subject.

I'd just like to clear a few things up and ask another question if I may;

I am scatterbrained. I will freely admit it. I have lost quite a few of the CDs, some have been stolen, and some I still own but are irreprably scratch / beer coated etc...

I really need to get my media unlocked!
As for all the helpful souls who took the mickey for using WMP, despite working in IT - I'm a hardware guy, not software! You want a fancy games machine / audio machine built I'm your man, but I could tell you a damn thing about s*dding microsoft windoze encrytion.
I copied most of my library about 4 - 5 years ago and I don't remember being offered a choice as to the encryption. I didn't know it did it either!

I'm going to try this "freeme" tool everyones mentioned... once I've done that can I copy / change my music to MP3 format somehow?
And will it take up a lot more room?
My collection is well over 100 albums!

so far as my knowledge on audio compression goes... i think doin' that'll degrade the quality of your music even further.

since your CDs have been damaged/lost/stolen, i think your best bet would be to kill the protection using "freeme" and then go on with your "unprotected" WMAs.



Sorry if I hurt you in any way Q-Puppy.

boomslang.

No worries dude! No offence taken! It was a fair point as well. Thanx for your help mate.


Regardz,

QP