laptop dying. need itunes help.

[Adeodatus]

So my hp laptop is dying (works well for about 5-10 minutes then crashes sometimes it will work fine if im only doing one thing at a time) and I have been told i need to rebuild my OS or upgrade to windows 7.

I have taken all of my important files and transferred them to my desktop. But here is where im stuck. I copied all of my music folders and put them on my desktop but some of the music files say "AAC (audio protected)" and I cant play them on my desktop. So I am worried if I rebuild my OS or upgrade to windows 7 I will lose all my music that is protected when I try to move them back to my laptop. This true? Is there a way to back up my protected music with out any risk of losing it?

[DaveInOroValley]

You should be fine. The drm protection is attached in one way to what ever computers you have authorized to play the files via your account within iTunes.

[Adeodatus]

Cool. Thanks man!

[Rivers]

When I got DRM music, I would routinely make a playlist of that music, then burn a CD using the AIFF file format, uncompressed and incapable of retaining the DRM coding. Then I would import those songs from the CD into iTunes. I'd have full CD-quality music without that irritating DRM issue. Plus I had a CD backup of purchased music. I could then delete the purchased music from the library so I didn't have authorization issues.

Take those AAC files, put them in a playlist, then burn that playlist to CD using AIFF format for the music files. Then follow the above steps.