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I have Gigabytes of MP3s that I've ripped over the years from my collection of CDs. I've always used Windows Media Player to Rip music with no problems whatsoever.

However, I've recently bought a number of second-hand CDs which were (mainly) released in the 2000s and these CDs all appear to have some kind of copy protection. Windows Media Player fails with any number of different errors - or else, appears to Rip the music then produces nothing.

Do these CDs have copy-protection on them? If so, how can I rip them?

Lefty
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  • Could you look at this question : How to check if a CD is copy protected?, you can look at your CDs if they have the official CD logo. – Bebs Mar 01 '17 at 15:02
  • @Bebs Yes, I looked at that question before I asked. The CDs do indeed have the proper logo on them as you would expect - they are mainstream CDs produced by large companies like Sony for artists like Janet Jackson. I know that Sony were guilty of a copy-protection scandal back around 1998 (?) where they included virus-like software on audio CDs - I just didn't know if it had become normal for them thwart Ripping after that time. – Lefty Mar 01 '17 at 15:10
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    I use a freeware app called CDEX, never had a problem with any CDs. Used to use AudioGrabber, but it started flaking out on me a few years ago. – Johnny Bones May 30 '17 at 19:57
  • some copy protection schemes (for games) can cause read failures if the disk controller your optical drive is attached to goes into PIO fallback mode. Not sure if this would impact CD redbook audio, but you might check to see if this is the case anyway ( https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/817472 ) The link speaks of HDD, but that's part of the problem: optical drives also fail these checks, but the removable nature of the discs means the drive may appear to fail on some disks, incrementing the counter and never resetting. – Yorik Jun 02 '17 at 21:10

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Try holding down shift whenever you insert the CD, this temporarily disable any autorun and should keep any background processes on the disk from running.

Scott ResistTHIS Hamilton
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  • As it happens, I asked a question about the "Rootkit Scandal" on SuperUser SE some years ago: http://superuser.com/questions/931367/sony-cds-and-rootkit-scandal the response was that Autorun should no longer be a problem. Are you suggesting otherwise? – Lefty Mar 01 '17 at 16:52
  • I'm not sure how it works in newer Windows, I just remember that being a fix back in the day of Sony's shenanigans – Scott ResistTHIS Hamilton Mar 01 '17 at 17:03
  • OK, well, I didn't know about this trick anyway so I've learned something and will give it a try when I next encounter problems. – Lefty Mar 01 '17 at 17:11
  • I don't know if it will work, but try using EAC (Exact Audio Copy), as this program accesses directly the CD driver bypassing the operating system. – José David May 07 '17 at 09:49