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Display Name (?):

Portable Media Serial Number

Short Name (?):

WmdmPmSN

Executable (?):

svchost.exe

Library (?):

mspmsnsv.dll

Depends On (?):

None.

Supports (?):

None.

Description (?):

Retrieves the serial number of any portable media player connected to this computer. If this service is stopped, protected content might not be down loaded to the device.

OS (?):

XP Home/Professional, Vista Home/Business, Server 2003, Vista Server

Startup (?):

Default	Home	Workstation	Server	Minimal	Tweaked	Automatic
Manual	Manual	Manual	Manual	Manual	Disabled	Disabled

Explanation (?):

The portable media serial number service is used for digital rights management (DRM) technology that allows an author of multimedia files to restrict usage of those files to guidelines they lay out, instead of it being freely distributable. The purpose of this technology is to reduce piracy of copyrighted materials. This service holds the purpose of representing a digital mulitmedia device by an identification number. This allows a media playing program to correctly distinguish the rights that the portable media player holds, and allows it to act accordingly. This technology is only used by Windows Media Player though, and the DRM actions are restricted to Windows Media formats, such as Windows Media Audio (.WMA) and Windows Media Video (.WMV) files. It is best that you set this service to manual, and it will activate if it is ever needed.