I have a copy of Mogwai: Government Commissions (Promo CD) and I'm finding it impossible to play or rip the CD on my computer. I know the CD isn't defective as I can play it on a regular CD player, but none of my CD-ROM drives can do anything with it.

I've found that none of the copy protection detection programs listed find anything, so I'm a bit stumped on how to deal with it. If it helps any, the inside CD has "Sonopress" listed on it, which indicates Cactus Data Shield but I'm not sure. Also, the CD, when read through Explorer, just lists like any of my other non-protected CDs.

I've had the most success with a Lite-On 48246S and a Mitsumi FX240S as these drives can actually detect the track listings, but none of my other drives, (including a NEC SCSI 32x, Teac 32x IDE and 24x IDE, Matsushita DVD/CDRW) can even read it.

With the Liteon drive, EAC cannot detect a matching read command, but it detects with the Mitsumi as a D4 1, but even this does not play.

Also, Alcohol 120% detects the starting address as -0000001 and both it and EAC detect 99 tracks with 10 audio and the rest data.

I've had no success with any program, including CloneCD, Feurio, Blindwrite, ISOBuster, Daemon Tools and CDEx.

Thanks for any help.

plextor premium and exact audio copy should do it ALWAYS, with ANY Audio-CD protection. You could also try ANYDVD.

if this helps!!

I have been ripping music from CDs with copy protect on them to WMAs through MSmediaplayer. It will not recognize the music tracks and will not let me see them nor rip them as it takes me directly to some program on the first track. What has worked for me several times is to do the following:

1-look at the disc and see if there appears to be 2 separate "tracks"
2-if there are, take some masking tape and with a razor blade cut 2-1/4 inch strips and place them firmly over only one "Track" symmetrical on 2 side (Balance) Make sure the tape is on tight and balanced. Trim off what is not needed on outside of the disk.
3-place in drive and it will not read the track covered.

I have ripped the music direct to MSMediaplayer as if there was no copy protect!! It will allow me to bring it into Itunes but in their format only that will not allow me to play or burn on anything other than their proprietary software. This sucks as I paid $ for the music tracks to use in any format that I want.

Thanks for the suggestion JAC40. Yes I have already tried this, and no, it did not make any difference with the reading of the CD.

ronnie_t: I'm not sure if I want to purchase an expensive burner just for CDs especially at this point in time when DVD burners are ubiquitous and cheap. It looks like I'll have to purchase a DVD burner at this time and hope it plays this CD. If not, I'll have to get the actual retail version of this CD rather than the promo.
It appears that many promo CDs have extremely strong copy protection on them to prevent early leaking of the album.

Which are the best DVD burners for getting around music CD copy protection?

Thanks.

Have you tried Exact Audio Copy? Free prog that has copied everything I have tried

I think you're best off with a plextor 716. It's not as good as the premium for (audio)cd's, but nevetheless a good cd/dvd burner. I am sorry, I dont have experience with other brands for dvd-burners.

My advice in general for ripping audio-cd's is:
- try exact audio copy (secure mode) if it doesnt recognize the cd, try "detect TOC manually"
- if it doesnt work, unload cd, install ANYDVD, load CD agsin and try exact audio copy again (you need not to use "detect TOC")

If this also doesnt work, than I would advice to copy the CD to an image using the latest CLONECD (choose audio and select "hide second session"). Then load the image with daemon-tools and rip using exact audio copy

Thanks for the suggestions ronnie_t, but I still have had no luck. The tracks would rip, but all I would get is silence.
I'm pretty sure that it's just the burner, and I guess I either have to buy a new burner, or find a non-promo version of this CD.

Thanks again for the help.