C00D11B1 error playing ripped music in Media Player 11

Windows Media Player 11 on Windows XP SP3 system cannot play wma audio cd ripped files anymore.  When you try to play them, they have red X’s next to the file name and you get the error: Windows Media Player encountered a problem while playing the file.  For additional assistance, click Web Help.  The Web Help is less than helpful.  All it really tells you is you have error: C00D11B1

For starters, this is definitely a DRM issue, as I notice the old track has no value under Audio Codec (under Properties) whereas when I rip a new CD to the library, when you right-click it and select Properties, you’ll see that the new rip has: Windows Media Audio 9.2 128kbps 44kHz, stereo 1-pass CBR

Also, the old track has entries under Media Usage Rights tab: This file can be played an unlimited number of times, Collaborative play for this file is allowed, This file can be burned an unlimited number of times, This file can be synchronized an unlimited number of times, The media usage rights for this file can be backed up. 
The new track says: This file is not protected.

What happened?
Some upgrade to either Windows Rights Management or WMP caused your license to become invalid or corrupt.

So, how do we fix this? 
If your library is small, just delete and re-rip the CDs again.  If you no longer have the original CDs, you may have to burn them to a CD and then re-rip them again without Content Protection enabled.  If WMP 11 will not burn them then try to uninstall (rollback) WMP 11 to a previous version (WMP 9 maybe) and then burn to CDs, reinstall WMP 11 and re-rip without Content Protection. 

Not very good solutions huh? DRM is a pain…

Refer to this article and this article for more info.
Refer to this website for some other ideas to try if nothing is working.

For issues with the same error in Vista, please check here.