Help With Copy Protection Issues - PlayReady Installation

[lily1029]

I have been struggling for years to keep my glitchy Windows 7 computer alive to keep using the Windows Media Center and last week the computer completely died as far as my skills could handle. I took it to a shop and they ordered a twin unit off of ebay and moved my stuff over and I thought I would be okay because all of my recorded files were safe on external hard drives. Now that the system is back I realize my error because all of my copy protected shows from non-broadcast channels don't work any more. I assume that these previous cable recordings are all lost causes at this point? Digging deeper to my problems I realize I can't play or tape cable channels now because it needs to update playready and can't. I see that garyan2 has a page on the epg123 website for DRM help but I'm not sure what to do. I did download the ResetDRM.zip and tried clicking the resetdrm.cmd and got scared by its warning about making things unwatchable. Is there any chance I can lose the broadcast recordings that still work as of now? If not, do I just type y and then it will run and fix playready or will I have more steps to go through after? I also ran the digital cable advisor analyzer and it came back with memory and processer passing but graphics failing. Is that just signaling the missing playready update? Thanks in advance for all of the great help I always get here!

[stuartm]

Changing hardware did indeed lose you your copy protected shows. They can not be recovered. (DRM depends on the hardware signature of the system) The non-copy protected shows should be fine no matter what the hardware. Graphics failing is not related to playready, it may be a driver problem or something else (make sure the sound drivers for the video card are installed as well). I haven't installed playready since the update no longer works but I think if you get it installed you should once again be able to record and play copy protected content (assunming you sort the graphics problem). But old copy protected recordings are gone for good.

[Space]

In general, old copy protected recordings can still be played back if you change a few pieces of hardware in your machine (hard drive, memory, graphics card, CPU, although I don't remember exactly which hardware is and isn't involved with the DRM), and I have even read reports of people being able to still play old copy protected recordings when they changed things such as the motherboard (replacing with the same exact model) even though the motherboard definitely is something that is considered by the copy protection.

However, it is highly unlikely that changing all hardware (even with identical models of all equipment) will allow you to play back old copy protected recordings. This is the main objective of the DRM/PlayReady system, to not allow you to play back recordings on a different system, while still allowing you to make minor changes to the hardware on your system (although not TOO many changes) and still being able to play back the old recordings.

I don't know what the issue was with your old system, but if it still works for video playback (it sounds like it may not), you can keep it around and use it to play back your old copy protected recordings (this would be the easiest option). If the problem was just one component, you can try swapping those components to see if you can get the old system to work (and your recordings can play back). But this task might be more than you want to take on.

As far as getting your new system to record and play back NEW copy protected recordings, that should be possible, although it requires you to download and install some software (whereas it was automatic before WMC went out of support) and people here should be able to help you with that.

Getting old copy protected recordings to work is actually a rather complicated issue, so if you are not technically savvy (and even those that are savvy would probably know nothing about it since it is so old and even when it was current was not used very much (WMC and PlayReady)) it probably is not worth the effort. For instance if you used your old hard drives in your new system (instead of mirroring the old drives on to new drives) then you will likely never be able to get the old copy protected recordings to work, as the old drives have probably been overwritten by the signature of the new system. However, if you have an image copy of the old drives (or the untouched old drives themselves), you can still use that to restore the old images (or use the old drives) while in the old system and it should work (assuming you solve the initial hardware problem you were having).

It really is complicated and probably not worth the effort unless the copy protected recordings are very valuable for some reason.

[lily1029]

The copy protected shows that are now unwatchable are by no means valuable. I can find ways to watch most of the shows through streaming services and retape the movies as they reappear it's just going to be a hassle, but one I can accept.

The key going forward is to figure out how to get PlayReady back up and running on the unit I now have. If anyone has experience using the files garyan2 has provided I would really appreciate the dummies walkthrough as I'm only savvy enough in this area to be dangerous to myself. I'm afraid to move forward without some more tips for fear of making things worse. I tried using PlayReadyPC_x64_v1.3.10.msi (v1.3.10) but going through the install didn't seem to work as turning on a cable channel still sends me to the update playready screen. I don't know which of the files I really need or if there are follow up steps I need to do as well.

[Space]

resetdrm.cmd will not affect your non-copy protected shows, so everything you recorded previously from OTA (as well as non-copy protected cable show recordings) should be fine after you run it.

I'm no expert about this stuff, but I have seen several posts here about people who were having problems with PlayReady and running resetdrm.cmd fixed it. It WILL make it so you will be unable to play any old (already recorded) copy protected recordings (which you already can't do, so not a problem), but should allow you to start recording and playing back new copy protected recordings.

[lily1029]

I tried running the resetdrm.cmd and got this failed log. Anyone know why this may have failed and if there is anything further I can try?

**** Begin CleanDRM *************************************************
**
** LogFile : C:\Users\Suzy\AppData\Local\Temp\cleandrmlog.txt
** CleanDRM TimeStamp : 1/8/2023, 7:19:41 PM
** CleanDRM Version : 11.0.7238.0
**
[Open data store for Exclusive]
Failed to open data store exclusively.
**** CleanDRM failed *********************************************
**
**** End CleanDRM ***************************************************

[Space]

WMC can't be running, I believe, see if you can follow the instructions in this post.


https://mega.nz/folder/2k0WXI5b#hEvTsif ... r/mhMhCIDJ

[garyan2]

https://garyan2.github.io/downloads/DRM/ResetDRM.zip

The ResetDRM.cmd file does all the necessary steps for you based on the post that @Space linked.

[Space]

Ah, I didn't realize that. lily1029 was already running that *.cmd file and got the "Failed to open data store exclusively." error. It looks like the script checks if you are running as admin, so I guess that's not it either...

[lily1029]

Looking at the steps that Space linked and comparing with the file dates on my computer it looks like C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\PlayReady\mspr.hds and C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\eHome\mcendindiv.hds aren't getting deleted as they have older dates for when they were last modified whereas the the two cache files show yesterday's date from when I tried to use the resetdrm.cmd. I don't know why my computer doesn't want to play nice but I'm wondering if it because of the same antivirus issue that made it hard for me to update my epg123 a few weeks ago. If so, I might be out of luck since I think that is tied to the Mcafee that Dell always forced their computers to have and I've never been able to get rid of.

[garyan2]

You might want to try rebooting into Safe Mode and then try to run it. Make sure nothing from WMC is accessing the files as well as McAfee.

[Space]

You can also try running cmd.exe as "Administrator" and then running the cmd script in that window just in case the check for admin mode is not working correctly.