hello all,
new to the forum here and have a basic question. recently i've tried to load .mp3's from one computer (work) to home via in external HD for play in my PC at home with winamp- my player of choice. the .mp3 files at work are obviously in mp3 format, but when i copy them and bring them home to open in my PC, they are somehow in .wma format! i don't know what's causing this....i have winamp as my defalt player and i rip all my audio CD's into .mp3 format using dbpoweramp by default on the same computer. it would be a real pain to have to use a file format converter to convert each audio file to mp3- i don't understand why its switching formats on me like this...any ideas?

What software are you using to to get the files on the external HD? What software are you using to to get the files from the external drive to your home computer?

Explain in detail how you're copying the files, and how you know they were initially in MP3 and how you know they ended up in WMA. You're probably just missing something along the way.

thanks for the quick replies guys. ok, the files are on the C drive at work- have the winamp logo and are called "winamp media files" under properties. they play in winamp fine at work. i hook up my external drive thru the usb port and simply click and drag folders with these audio files onto the external (PC at work runs windows 2000), then bring them home to play on my PC here (runs windows XP)...i play then directly from the external at home, i do not have the internal storage on my old PC to copy them all. for some reason, some, not all, of the files switch to .wma files when they were winamp media files at work. does this help? sorry if i'm being vague here guys.

also- my external drive should be ok, its only a year old and has never acted up, and my computer at home is an oldie, but is pretty stable and i keep it "clean" of too much junk. i think this is just a format problem or something like that.

Just out of curiosity, what leads you to believe they actually changed to WMA? Did the icon change?

If the icon changed and thats why you think it changed to WMA, then it hasn't. The other computer just hasn't been set up to display MP3s with the Winamp icon.

This is probably your problem. Your work PC probably displays the Winamp icon for WMA files whereas your home PC displays a Windows Media Player icon.

if that is my problem, is there any way i can remedy this instead of converting each file??

it seems to me that winamp should be able to play a windows media audio file....i don't care what the file format is as long as i can play them in wimamp together. my knowledge on this stuff is obviously limited, but can i change my computer to "recognize" all audio files as winamp icons by default or is it not that easy??

What makes you think you think they were MP3 files at work? Seems to me you ripped your collection to WMA.



Stock winamp can play WMA files. Did you uninstall the WMA decoder? Or are they DRMed WMA files?

WOW....ok i feel stupid. i searched "winamp windows media" in google just now and on the first page i read a link that said winamp LITE cannot play WMA files...seems i didn't realize i had winamp LITE at home and regular winamp at work. i downloaded the full 5.12 version of winamp and installed, plays wma files fine now. i thought it should. but thank you for all your replies and patience, much appreciated.