The VideoLAN Forums

I have a large A - Z collection of music downloaded over the years which has played without problem on vlc and wmp. Couple of days ago successfully burnt a cd with some on board for use in my car radio - fine no problem.

Today I selected a batch for further burning to cd but on using the burn facility in Windows 7, the selection appeared in WMP for burning to disc. Pressed the burn button in WMP but would not proceed as tracks were now protected and could not be burnt.

A look at list in WMP showed all tracks with an icon alongside indicating they could not be burnt. On trying these tracks in WMP they would only play a short preview.

Somehow these tracks have 'acquired' protection ( presumably in WMP ) . When tried in vlc they will not play at all with just the timer '00.00' flashing away.

So I've lost access to A - F of my collection which is very frustrating. Ideas please as to what has happened and more impotantly how do I recover my tracks please ?

Well I think I have answered my own question but thank you for looking and no doubt thinking about it.

Fortunately I had a complete backup of my music. So I fully deleted all from this laptop, irrespective of whether blocked or not, then reinstalled from my separate hard drive store.

But not before I had looked closer at Windows Media Player ( wmp) who I blame for this problem. I have now completely disabled this on my laptop - not to be used again. If you look closely into the multitude of 'options' availble when you dig in to it, you may be suprised to see it has a default option of allowing it to have full web access to no doubt tell HQ and the intergalactic galaxy what music I have. Not only has it reduced much of my music to 'preview' only status - including some of my own compositions - it has doubtless allowed someone somewhere to access music developed by myself !

If you use wmp, just have a close look at preferences and options.

All now works fine once again in VLC.

Thank you...........