Hey guys, I'm on my dads pc, he's ripped a good few albums onto his pc, something has happened don't know what and now he can't play the songs. We get a small red cross next to the song with no error code.
Rather than ripping all the albums again is there anything I can do?
I've been online to see if there was anything I could find and nothing helped.

It's WMP 11, on XP Home Edition

Just to say, other songs that have been added lately work fine. They were ripped straight to this pc. And he does own the albums.

Phenic Raider

Did you rip them using Windows Media Player? If not, you may want to try playing the files with a different media player or install a proper audio codec.

What file sizes do the tracks have? If they're each 1KB, they are definitely ripped incorrectly.

It could be a problem with the disk drive as well. Does it have the latest drivers?

Does playback from the CD directly work correctly? Audio CD's sometimes get ruined (especially CD-R's) without even being improperly handled.

The file sizes are correct, these ripped songs worked before but aren't now.
They were ripped with WMP and are in a correct format, can you link me to a web page with the codec download?

Are you trying to play them from WMP or Explorer? If they don't play by selecting them through just WMP, then try opening them in Explorer as it is likely the file location is slightly different.

If they don't play when double clicking on the ACTUAL file, it is indeed most likely a codec error. If I remember rightly, basic WMP only lets you rip to wma, mp3 and (possibly) wav format natively. It should be able to play those files back.

Try opening the files in VLC as it plays nearly all audio and video formats going. (It comes with a load of codecs by default so it'll probably work to be honest)

If VLC doesn't play them, there may be something corrupt / not quite right with the files themselves.

If the discs have copy protection on them, WMP may have decided to stop you from playing them correctly (by requiring some kinda DMA-type license thing). Try ripping them with some other software such as iTunes or FreeRip (I used to use it "back in the day")

If THAT doesn't work, try playing the discs normally through WMP... Try playing them in a CD player... Just do everything possible to make sure the discs still work normally.

If nothing works as described by Spunky, it's likely a problem with your CD's, CD-R(RW) drive's drivers, or worse, a hardware problem.