Can't Rip CDs Except With iTunes

January 6, 2009 8:56 AM

I have several different applications on my PC, all of which can rip CDs: winamp, nero, dbpoweramp, windows media player, and itunes. Suddenly, itunes is the only one which will actually rip a CD, but I hate itunes and don't want to use it. Any suggestions as to why none of these other apps will rip CDs anymore but itunes will? Better yet, any suggestions of how to rectify the situation?
posted by briank to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

Without further details I'd suggest you uninstall any programs you don't use (particularly iTunes) and re-install which ever application you want to keep (making sure you have the latest version.)
posted by wfrgms at 9:07 AM on January 6, 2009

What happens when you try to rip a CD with something else?
posted by bitdamaged at 9:12 AM on January 6, 2009

Response by poster: wfrgms -- tried that, no dice

bitdamaged -- the other apps come back with errors on the tracks as they try to rip them. Winamp says it can't find the encoder, for example, and Nero says "can't access CD", so the error messages aren't consistent enough to point to a particuar problem
posted by briank at 9:27 AM on January 6, 2009

I've had this issue half a dozen times. Everything goes fine, then you install something and suddenly only one application (or worse still, none) will burn CDs. Reinstalling Windows has been the only fix that works reliably; I suspect it's something to do with drivers.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 9:36 AM on January 6, 2009

While many of those programs are broad and versatile, none of them are as good a ripper as Exact Audio Copy.
posted by box at 10:12 AM on January 6, 2009

Yeah, you really only need EAC and (maybe) a good ASPI layer. I suspect you've got some sort of registry weirdness going on, as often happens when installing multiple driver filters. Search on the CDFreaks forums and you'll probably find some relevant troubleshooting approaches, but they will require registry editing.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 10:47 AM on January 6, 2009

Will IsoBuster access the disk? I've used it on some ahem CD's in the past to extract the .wav files directly.
posted by Solomon at 2:07 PM on January 6, 2009