MP3 Encoder Problem

Hello. I've been running into a problem, recently, and I was wondering if I could get any help here.

A while ago, I received a copy of Music Creator 4 as a present. I installed it on my laptop, under my personal account, and properly registered it. However, my brother tried to install it again, this time on the public account I have on my laptop, in case a family member needs to use it. Ever since then, I haven't been able to export mp3 files. I keep getting a message, "The MP3 encoder must be unlocked before use. Please visit http://www.cakewalk.com to upgrade a previous encoder, or to purchase a new encoder." Seeing as I was creating mp3's before then, I'm a bit confused. I also haven't really found any options on the site for upgrading or anything like that.

Any help on this matter would be highly appreciated.

Hello. I am having this problem."The MP3 encoder must be unlocked before use". I downloaded audacity and imported my wave file. I can see the track witht the purple wave in it and it will play in audacity. When I try to export as an mp3 it tells me I need the encoder. I downloaded the lame encoder but when I try this process again it finds lame but I get a warning saying it could not open the encoder library. I'm missinng a step somewhere. Could it be something in the wave file originally save from mc4 still not letting me access lame?

Hi Beagle. The version is lame-3.98b8.tar. Thanks.

I downloaded 3.97 and unzipped it. Now I import my wave file and it populates and plays in audacity. I click file /export as mp3/which brings me to the save mp3 file as screen. The top field to the left of the search field has the libmp3lame-win-3.97 name and folder in it. It is also in the box below. The file name is the name of the wave file imorted to audacity and save as type is mp3. Now I click open and I get the warning saying that I need lame to open this file. Please excuse the lack of some basic computer skills as this (recording) is the first time I've used my computer for anything other than shopping or ripping a cd.

It worked! I think I was locating the wrong file within the lame folder. A blue file popped in the second time. Now it automatically finds the file.Thanks for you help Beagle. It seems everyday I have some sort of hurdle to jump. It's a lot of fun though.

I also found it easier to import into Audacity, convert using the Lame encoder, then export again.