Putting iTunes songs on a non-Apple player

Q My daughter loaded all of my audio CDs and some borrowed CDs into iTunes on my PC. But my MP3 player is a SanDisk Sansa, which can't use iTunes. What can I do?

BEVERLY YODER, MIAMI

A You need to move the songs into a Sansa-compatible music program, such as Microsoft's Windows Media Player 12, which is pre-installed on new PCs.

But first you need to make sure the songs your daughter copied were recorded by iTunes in the MP3 file format used by the Sansa player and Windows Media Player. Highlight a song title in iTunes, right click it and from the menu choose "get info." Under the heading called "kind," see if the song format is AAC (works only on Apple players) or MP3.

If the songs were copied as MP3 files, open Windows Media Player. Click "organize," then "manage libraries," then "music." Click the "add" button to the right of the "library locations" box. On the left, click the "my music" folder, then "iTunes," then "iTunes media," then "music." The songs are in folders named after the artist; yours will be in a folder called "unknown" because song titles are lost when copying CDs. (They can be restored later by manually renaming songs.)

Click the folder you want, then at the bottom of the screen click "include folder" to add it to Windows Media Player. To load the songs on your Sansa player, see tinyurl.com/24ot37l.

But if the songs were copied by iTunes in the AAC format, you'll need to convert them to MP3s. In iTunes, call up your music library. Click edit, choose preferences, then click the "general" tab and choose "import settings." Click "import using," and on the pop-up menu choose "MP3 encoder." Click OK on both menus.

Now hold down the "Ctrl" key while clicking each AAC song so that it's highlighted. Then click the "advanced" heading and choose "create MP3 version." The MP3 songs will appear in iTunes and the iTunes music folder. Follow the steps above to move the MP3 songs into Windows Media Player.

Q I can't get my new Windows 7 computer to run the setup disk for my Canon i455 printer, which worked fine with Windows XP. Is there a software patch that will allow me to use the installation CD with Windows 7?

RICHARD KUEHN, ALEXANDRIA, MINN.

A Yes. Go to tinyurl.com/2fywz5h, and under "drivers and software" choose Windows 7 on the pull-down menu. Note that you should download both a driver and software, and that they work with either the 32-bit (standard) or 64-bit (extra random-access memory capacity) versions of Windows 7.

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