WMA audio files with DRM--I have the original disk

Question

I am in a situation described several times by SuperUsers in their posts, for example here. Basically, many years ago, I copied some music from a CD to my system using the WMA format, unintentionally and unfortunately with DRM. When I changed computers years later, I never noticed that those audio files became locked due to the DRM. The old computer is long gone.

But I still have the original CD! As my luck would have it, however, it's badly scratched. I am able to burn 7 of the 8 tracks successfully (this time without DRM!) but the eighth track copies poorly.

I would prefer if I could "unlock" the old file if I could only find a way to pull a license key or something from the CD.

Question: is there a way to do this--"unlock" an old copy of a DRM'd WMA audio file using the original CD which is scratched?

Thanks!

EDIT: Thinking out loud, I understand that my old Windows Media Player stored something like unique, one-time license keys to those old files somewhere in its directories, so without the WMP application, I have permanently lost access to my files. Or, could it be the other way around--do the files have written into them something like keys so that files + original CD = success?

I am searching around, hoping for some alternative solutions. For example, peraps I will be able to burn the CD again with DRM and swap the new track for the old track, then be able to play it in such a DRM setting. Then while streaming, I would copy the file. Perhaps even use a program to remove the DRM all together--that would be ideal.

Answer 1

If you have Windows 10, you can use Microsoft's "Digital Rights Update Tool" to remove that particular DRM:

The Digital Rights Update Tool removes the copy protection you added when ripping CDs to the .wma format from within Windows Media Player. Other forms of copy protection cannot be removed.