How to narrow down content protection problems in Update Rollup 2 for Media Center 2005

As I mentioned in this previous post, some folks have encountered problems playing protected content after upgrading to Update Rollup 2 for Media Center 2005. We are still investigating root causes and trying to determine fixes for various types of protected content errors, and you can help us with this process.

If you think you are encountering a problem playing protected content on your Media Center 2005 machine after installing Update Rollup 2 (or you aren't sure but want to check and make sure you can successfully play protected content) you can try to download and play this Windows Media Audio file on your Media Center. When you download this file and choose to play it, Windows Media Player should display a dialog similar to the following:

Windows Media Player security upgrade dialog

You may also be prompted to back up existing licenses at some point during the process of trying to play this WMA file. If you have one of the content protection problems we have been investigating, installing this security upgrade or backing up licenses will result in an error and should display a numerical error code. For example, you may see a Windows Media Player error dialog with a Secure Storage Protection Error message.

If you encounter any such error, I would really appreciate it if you could post a comment on this blog post or contact me and let me know the exact error code and message that you receive. I will continue to update my blog as we make progress investigating and solving protected content playback issues, so stay tuned for the latest....

There is a new hotfix available as of 4/14/2006 that is designed to fix protected content playback issues in Update Rollup 2 for Media Center 2005. Please try out this hotfix if you have DRM/protected content playback issues in Update Rollup 2.

<update date="4/15/2006"> Added a link to a new DRM hotfix that is now available in case people find and read some of my older blog posts in an attempt to fix this type of issue </update>