Windows 7 and a DRM problem

OK first, tragedy.

My hard drive fails. All is lost within. Bummer.

New hope!, I by a new hard drive (1TB Hitachi 7200 rpm and 32mb cache) and a shiny new copy of Windows 7 32 bit. I figure since I had to start over, why not do the same with the OS. My Zune 120 works fine, and so after installing Win7, I plug the Zune in and download the software. Then I copy my music from the Zune to the PC using the Zune interface. Now almost all the music I purchased from ZM won't play. Says I need to get a Zune pass to comfirm the DRM. I tried everything I could find within the Zune settings to establish this as my main computer. I even paid for a 1 month Zune pass (The free 14 day trial conveniently would'nt work for me after 3 tries) hoping it would straighten things out. It did, but in the properties of the music files it shows an experation date which corresponds to my 1 month Zune pass. This won't do. I'm not renting music I already paid for. I went into my purchase history and tried several times to re-download all the songs, but nothing changes. What am I doing wrong?. I don't want to lose my purchased music. If this is a common problem, could someone give me a step by step description of how to fix the problem.

this is very strange indeed. you need to call the zune support staff and have them make sure your purchase history is up to date.

Also its is very possible that you might have 'purchased' music during your free trial period when you got your zune ( by default i belive all zune owners get 14 days trial) if during that trial period you logged on and hit purchase and did not get any points removed from your balance then you will have a drmed copy for that month.

Also what you want to do is go into your settings -> account -> computer and devices and make sure your computers name is under computers. if its not then delete one of the computer and quit the zune software and restart the application. Make sure you sign on using your windows live id.. then try playing the music.  you must make sure you windows live id is the same windows live id u used to make the purchases. 

Now with regard to drm, not all tracks are drm free yes about 90% of the catlogue is drm free but there are always a few record comapnies that are still latching to drm.

If the songs have burn rights, I would recommend burning them to CD and then re-ripping them as MP3. In the future, don't purchase anything unless it's in MP3 format, even if you have to go elsewhere to do that - like AmazonMP3.

Since MP3 doesn't have DRM that will keep you from running into an issue in the future.

 Juim2 wrote:

OK first, tragedy.

My hard drive fails. All is lost within. Bummer.

New hope!, I by a new hard drive (1TB Hitachi 7200 rpm and 32mb cache) and a shiny new copy of Windows 7 32 bit. I figure since I had to start over, why not do the same with the OS. My Zune 120 works fine, and so after installing Win7, I plug the Zune in and download the software. Then I copy my music from the Zune to the PC using the Zune interface. Now almost all the music I purchased from ZM won't play. Says I need to get a Zune pass to comfirm the DRM. I tried everything I could find within the Zune settings to establish this as my main computer. I even paid for a 1 month Zune pass (The free 14 day trial conveniently would'nt work for me after 3 tries) hoping it would straighten things out. It did, but in the properties of the music files it shows an experation date which corresponds to my 1 month Zune pass. This won't do. I'm not renting music I already paid for. I went into my purchase history and tried several times to re-download all the songs, but nothing changes. What am I doing wrong?. I don't want to lose my purchased music. If this is a common problem, could someone give me a step by step description of how to fix the problem.