Is it me or WMP?

June 30, 2006 8:23 PM

All of a sudden I can't rip a CD to mp3 files using WMP-10. What happened and (more important) how do I fix it?

I swear I've done this before on this machine, but now I can't rip to mp3 uning WMP-10. I get an error message that tells me "Windows Media player cannot rip the track because a compatible MP3 encoder is not installed on your computer. Install a compatible MP3 encoder or choose a different format to rip to (such as Windows Media Audio)."

Well, I don't want WMA, so I clicked "More Information" and got the error message C00D0FAA which contains a pointer to obtain an MP3 encoder on the "MP3 Creation Packs and DVD Decoders for Windows XP Web page". In turn, this page tells me that "MP3 encoding is included at no cost with Windows Media Player 10" - which is what I thought in the first place.

Maybe I'm just zoned out, but I don't get it. Can anbody help?

posted by dragonbay to Technology (5 answers total)

Perhaps someone is trying to tell you to just download iTunes and rip them that way? :-)

I thought that WMP could only rip up to a certain bitrate anyway. But you're right, WMP 10 can certainly rip to mp3.

Did you do any updates recently?

Maybe this link will help. Scary bit: your registry might be pooched.

Also read this.

Actually, installing iTunes might be a hell of a lot safer - and easier.
posted by drstein at 10:38 PM on June 30, 2006

Best answer: I found an answer here. I'll save you the trouble of clicking it and just copy and paste what it says below.

"According to Microsoft, you have two options for dealing with this problem: change the audio quality settings or edit your system’s registry. To adjust the audio quality, select Options from the Tools menu and click the Rip Music tab. Move the Audio Quality slider to any value other than 128Kbps and click OK.

If you plan to edit the Registry, be sure to create a backup copy first. Click Run in the start menu and type regedit. Make sure you select My Computer at the top of the left hand portion of the Registry Editor window. Click Export in the File menu and provide a filename for the backup. Next, find the key;
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\Settings\MP3Encoding\LowRateSample.

Double-click the LowRateSample key and delete the number in the Value Data field.

We once encountered a similar problem but the above solution wasn’t helpful because we could find no LowRateSample key, only a LowRate key. To resolve the error message, we right-clicked the MP3Encoding folder on the left side of the Registry Editor window (again, make sure you have a backup before modifying anything) and selected Rename. We named the file MP3Encoding-old. Next, we selected Add/Remove Programs from the Control Panel and clicked the Add/Remove Windows Components button along the left hand side of the window. We remove the check next to Windows Media Player and clicked OK to remove WMP 10. Reinstalling WMP10 resolved the problem and allowed us to rip files to MP3 format."

Hope this helps.
posted by Effigy2000 at 10:39 PM on June 30, 2006

Or use CDex, which is a bit of a pain to get going but has an absolutely impeccable ripper (just make sure you turn on Full Paranoia) and uses the excellent LAME MP3 encoder.
posted by flabdablet at 12:41 AM on July 1, 2006

or you could use exact audio copy in conjunction with lame.
posted by beerbajay at 2:06 AM on July 1, 2006

Response by poster: Time to learn about new players..... thanks all!
posted by dragonbay at 4:09 AM on July 1, 2006