Mike Rubin

I have had this problem since trying to reinstall SonicStage 4.3 after reformatting the boot drive on my XP Media Center computer. SonicStage previously worked fine, but I've been unable to get it to run except on one occasion despite formatting the drive AGAIN and installing and uninstalling SonicStage endlessly. Thus far, SonyConnect support has not been able to point me to anything helpful. One difference between the initial installation years ago and the reinstallations now is that, in the case of the old installation, I installed before Service Pack 3 became available. Now, when I reformat the drive and reinstall XP, among the first things I do is update XP using Microsoft Update. These days, that means that SP 3 is installed before my other apps. Does anyone have a sense whether SP 3 has done something that interferes with SonicStage? When I try to run it now, the start-up screen simply says "Initializing" and then it hangs until I reboot the machine, no matter how much later that is. It does not load, its name does not show up on the taskbar, and it does not show as a running application in Task Manager (cntrl+alt+delete). In the meantime, I can't get access to my purchased music from SonyConnect. If I can't get SonicStage to run, anyone have an idea how to defeat the DRM so that I can save the music to a more universal format? Thanks for any help you can offer.