Activate the mp3 encoding feature under WMP 8 / 9 / 10

By default, the Windows Media Player (WMP) program in versions 8.0, 9.0 or 10.0 will not allow you to save files in the MP3 format, the most widely used music format on the Internet. This tip will allow you to fix this problem under Windows 2000 and XP.

The only encoding format available is the Microsoft proprietary format, WMA (Windows Media Audio).

To convince you of this, open WMP and click on Tools, Options and Rip Music.

You should see the following window, in both WMP 8 and 9 (identical for WMP 10):

To activate the MP3 support mode you simply need to execute this reg file:

Reboot your PC and you should then see this on either WMP 8 or WMP 9:

There is no need to worry about this reg file, the contents are as follows:

REGEDIT4
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\Settings]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MediaPlayer\Settings\MP3Encoding]
"LowRate"=dword:0000dac0
"MediumRate"=dword:0001f400
"MediumHighRate"=dword:0003e800
"HighRate"=dword:0004e200

Note:

1.The final version of WMP 9.0 was still not available at the time of creation of this trick. The Release Candidate 1 was used with success.
2.It is possible to personalize the encoding rate used by WMP by editing the “LowRate”, “MediumRate”, “MediumHighRate” and “HighRate” values. To do this you will need to know the following:

56 Kbps = dword:0000dac0
64 Kbps = dword:0000fa00
112 Kbps = dword:0001b580
128 Kbps = dword:0001f400
160 Kbps = dword:00027100
192 Kbps = dword:0002ee00
224 Kbps = dword:00036b00
256 Kbps = dword:0003e800
320 Kbps = dword:0004e200