ASPI for non-privileged users in Windows XP

• darryn


• 31 Jan 2005

I have recently consolidated all of my home computers and servers into one notebook in preparation for travel. With only one computer, Kirsten and I now share. Being the tyrant that I am, I made her a “Limited User”. It turns out that this is not without a price.

If you are not an Administrator of a Windows XP machine, you cannot use ASPI. This might not mean much to most of my readers, let me translate: you cannot rip CD’s. It turns out that this is a sensible security precaution, as Bad People might use ASPI to do Bad Things. But I want Kip to be able to rip CD’s when I am not around, so I sought out the answer.

The answer is: ForceASPI 1.8. The official site seems to be down, perhaps brought down by Adaptec, whose drivers they appropriate. The google cache will give you the instructions, and a search for forceaspi18.zip will give you the file.

Allow me to mirror the instructions:

• Run dumpASPI to backup your current ASPI layer
• Run instASPI to install the new ASPI layer
• Reboot your PC
• Run aspichk to see if everything worked OK

Now AudioGrabber is happy, and it is now free (although I did pay for it, back in the day).