If you’re a music lover, you know how important it is to have your favorite songs handy when you want to listen to them. But if you’re like most people, you don’t have all of your music on hand at all times. That’s where Windows Media Center comes in. Windows Media Center lets you watch and listen to your favorite music from your computer or portable device, as well as play back any audio files that are connected to it. You can also use Windows Media Center to rip CDs and DVDs so that they can be stored on your computer or portable device. To rip a CD in Windows 7 Media Center, follow these steps:

  1. Open the Start screen and type “media center” into the search bar. This will open the “Media Center” window.
  2. In the “Media Center” window, click on the “Rip CDs” icon at the top left corner of the window. This will take you to a new page where you will need to provide some information about your CD-ROMs and music files. You can either provide this information manually or use one of our templates below.
  3. In the “Information” section, enter the name of your CD-ROMs and music files into the fields below and click on the " Rip CDs Now!" button next to each field. The ripping process will start automatically and should take about 10 minutes depending on how well organized your discs are! Once it’s finished, click on the “Finish Riping” button at the bottom of the window to finish everything up!

Rip a CD in Windows 7 Media Center

Place your CD into your optical drive. From within Windows Media Center, open the Music Library and select the CD.

If you haven’t previously ripped a CD in Windows 7 with either Windows Media Center or Windows Media Player, you’ll be prompted to select whether or not you’d like to add copy protection. Click Next.

By default, your CD will be ripped to .WMA format. The rip settings for Windows Media Center are pulled from Windows Media Player. So to change the rip settings, we’ll need to do so in Media Player. Click Finish.

From within Windows Media Player, click on Tools from Menu bar, and select Options. If you are new to Windows Media Player 12, check out our beginner’s guide on how to manage your music with WMP 12.

Select the Rip Music tab and choose your output format from the Format drop down list. You can also select the Audio quality (bit rate) by moving the slider bar under Audio quality. Click OK when you are finished.

 

Now, you are ready to rip your CD. Click on Rip CD.

Click Yes to confirm you want to rip the CD.

You can follow the progress as each track is being converted.

  

When the CD is finished you’re ready to start enjoying your music any time you wish in Windows 7 Media Center.

Looking for some more tasks you can perform in Media Center with just a remote? Check out our earlier post on how to crop, edit, and print photos in Windows Media Center.