by swanstuff » Tue Dec 29, 2015 7:56 am
I have the gold licence, and am using
Over a number of years, I've found MM to be easily the best such product available for ripping, tagging, and playing my extensive music collection.
In the last few months, however, I've noticed a gradual loss of functionality which means that MM is no longer usable for the first of these three tasks, inconsistent for the second, and less enjoyable for the last.
The main issues have included:
1) Inability to fetch CD information from the web.
2) Inability to rip CDs - my gold licence copy says it is unable to access a file that it wants on my C drive, even though I save all my music to an external drive. Meanwhile, my free copies on other machines say they no longer support saving into MP3 format.
3) It's nice to play music while doing other things on this PC, but from time to time, MM will come to the foreground in an annoying small window (postcard sized) that breaks in two if you try to move it out of the way, and stays on top of my work unless I click the "-" button. Then, once "-" is clicked (like now), MM keeps playing, but there's no way to get back to the MM window: it will just keep on playing what's in its playlist, but I can't amend that list, add items, change the volume, pause it, or anything. Even the Task Manager doesn't show it, nor will Alt+Tab toggle to it, and there's no MM in the taskbar.
Now, I am aware that I am using an old PC with Windows XP, and that this remains unsupported. However, I haven't messed with anything, and I would prefer not to spend out on something else when MM has worked perfectly on this machine. Furthermore, this is the one with the gold licence, and I guess I'd have to buy a new "lifetime" licence if I want to put MM on another machine.
I've raised issues (1) & (2) on here before, but none of the suggestions solved the problem, so I've accepted that my MM is broken. I haven't asked about (3) as it's a mere annoyance, and if that was all that was wrong, I'd live with it.
So may I ask for some advice please. Which of these options would be best?
1) Is it worth buying a whole new PC with Windows 8 or 10, just to run MM? Will I also have to buy a new gold licence? Is MM on its way out anyway, as I don't want to throw money at a failing system?
2) Might it be possible to re-install MM, or could there be a global fix on its way that will clear up these near-fatal issues?
3) Should I just cut my losses, and use the deeply flawed (but still working) Windows Media Player to convert CDs to whatever format it wants, THEN convert those to MP3s using third party software, and tag them all by hand? That sounds like a dog-and-bark-yourself situation, but it's the only one I can think of that won't cost.
Thank you for any assistance available.
I have the gold licence, and am using
Over a number of years, I've found MM to be easily the best such product available for ripping, tagging, and playing my extensive music collection.
In the last few months, however, I've noticed a gradual loss of functionality which means that MM is no longer usable for the first of these three tasks, inconsistent for the second, and less enjoyable for the last.
The main issues have included:
1) Inability to fetch CD information from the web.
2) Inability to rip CDs - my gold licence copy says it is unable to access a file that it wants on my C drive, even though I save all my music to an external drive. Meanwhile, my free copies on other machines say they no longer support saving into MP3 format.
3) It's nice to play music while doing other things on this PC, but from time to time, MM will come to the foreground in an annoying small window (postcard sized) that breaks in two if you try to move it out of the way, and stays on top of my work unless I click the "-" button. Then, once "-" is clicked (like now), MM keeps playing, but there's no way to get back to the MM window: it will just keep on playing what's in its playlist, but I can't amend that list, add items, change the volume, pause it, or anything. Even the Task Manager doesn't show it, nor will Alt+Tab toggle to it, and there's no MM in the taskbar.
Now, I am aware that I am using an old PC with Windows XP, and that this remains unsupported. However, I haven't messed with anything, and I would prefer not to spend out on something else when MM has worked perfectly on this machine. Furthermore, this is the one with the gold licence, and I guess I'd have to buy a new "lifetime" licence if I want to put MM on another machine.
I've raised issues (1) & (2) on here before, but none of the suggestions solved the problem, so I've accepted that my MM is broken. I haven't asked about (3) as it's a mere annoyance, and if that was all that was wrong, I'd live with it.
So may I ask for some advice please. Which of these options would be best?
1) Is it worth buying a whole new PC with Windows 8 or 10, just to run MM? Will I also have to buy a new gold licence? Is MM on its way out anyway, as I don't want to throw money at a failing system?
2) Might it be possible to re-install MM, or could there be a global fix on its way that will clear up these near-fatal issues?
3) Should I just cut my losses, and use the deeply flawed (but still working) Windows Media Player to convert CDs to whatever format it wants, THEN convert those to MP3s using third party software, and tag them all by hand? That sounds like a dog-and-bark-yourself situation, but it's the only one I can think of that won't cost.
Thank you for any assistance available.