If you picked up the special edition of Xenoblade Chronicles X, chances are you have popped in the custom USB drive into your computer to listen to or download the soundtrack that they offered on the surprisingly heavy drive. However, as one Redditor has pointed out, the USB drive contains DRM that prevents you from copying the tracks from the drive onto whatever computer you’re using. It does this by mounting the folder on the Y drive (a designation commonly used for company networks along with X and Z), then proceeds to bar users from accessing this drive at all, and lastly changes the registry of the computer by hiding the drive completely in the registry files. Additionally, the soundtrack can only be accessed through a Windows program, Soundtrack.exe, so by normal means, the soundtrack is not able to be copied from the USB at all. Ouch!
So, long story short, users cannot download the soundtrack by accessing the Y drive. Fortunately, there is a way around this, albeit a little complicated. In order to download these tracks, perform the following actions:
- Use gpedit.msc using the Run function of your computer. From there, set the “Prevent access to drives from My Computer” to “Disabled” and then back to “Not Configured” on the Windows Explorer subfolder, accessed through User Configuration>Administrative Templates>Windows Components. For a better look, see this as well as this.
- ***NOTE***In my case, I have Windows 10 Home, so I did not have access to the gpedit at first, but I was able to download it from another source. Just as a precaution, though, if you are not familiar with working with registry files, you may not want to mess around with them too much as they could potentially do some damage to your computer.
- Next, access regedit through the Run function. In “Policies” (through HKEY_CURRENT_USER>Software>Microsoft>Windows>CurrentVersion) access “Explorer” and set the value of NoDrives to 0, or simply delete it. For a better look, see this.
After this, you should be able to access the USB drive “Y” again (or whichever letter drive it creates) and copy the files to your computer. Note that they are .wav files, a proprietary Windows audio file, so they will have to be reformatted for use on any iOS devices. Mac users will probably be out of luck entirely in terms of running the drive at all, too. While it is fairly frustrating that all this is required to get files off the drive, it is good that a workaround exists. Thanks greatly to CSFFlame for posting these findings on Reddit.
Editor’s Note
The reason behind this is probably because the soundtrack, composed by Hiroyuki Sawano who seems contracted with Sony Music Japan, also just so happened to publish the official soundtrack in Japan. Because of the whole legal red tape and licensing issues that are very prevalent when it comes to music for video games outside of Japan, hence one of the big reasons they don’t release soundtracks overseas, this is likely the culprit behind the situation. It’s really unfortunate, but for big fans of Japanese anime, this is something they will all know too well.
