win media player 12 problems with sync

Factual Questions
1

I have, Windows 7 which of course downgraded me to WMP 12. If you can’t tell, I don’t like it. Too many failed cd burns, and syncing is a real pain. My car stereo has a slot for a scan disk card, and I just did a sync to a new 2 gb card. Several albums seem to play but have no sound, many others act normal. Before we get to format, the stereo doesn’t care as long as it it .wma or mp3. It will switch back and forth as needed.

Some of the music files were on the old disk and work fine, some don’t.

I can’t find anything that says the files that won’t work have drm on them, besides some of them are on the old scan disk card and work fine. ((OLDER scan disk card was synced using vista WMP 11))

So is anyone else having these problems? how did you fix it? Right now I am planning on converting the whole mess to mp3 and drag and drop them right back onto the new card.

How does downgrading back to WMP 11 work, has anybody here tried it, how did it work out for you??? I am seriously thinking about it, 12 seems to be a stripped down player, it does ok with stuff on the computer, but when it comes to burning or sync the options are all gone and it just seems to do whatever it pleases.

Thanks for any help you can offer.
FTR I do like win 7 (Over Vista) just the player sucks.
If it would be easier, are there any freeware players for windows that I could install and use?

2

Well, I just had a thought, my wife’s laptop has a SD card reader in it.
It also has Vista with WMP 11 on it.
It is now syncing a couple of albums that weren’t working and guess what, it is converting them first!
I will check if this works in the car stereo, so for a new question, can I get WMP 12 to automatically convert the files as it syncs??
What is it converting them to?? I just brought up the properties and it says the same thing…WMA file opens with Windows Media Player.

3

Too late to edit evidently, but the files synced with WMP 11 work fine. I guess I will rebuild my list and use the old laptop to redo the whole thing.

Next I will be trying to fix up the desktop with something else.
either backup to 11 or find something else that works. Might even buy something if it isn’t terribly expensive. Suggestions are welcome. Boy am I glad I didn’t upgrade the laptop to Win 7.