NS_E_DRM_SECURE_STORE_NOT_FOUND (0xC00D274A) Fix

When You'll See This Error

You're trying to play a song or video you bought years ago—maybe from the Zune Marketplace or an old Windows Media Player store. You click play, and instead of music, you get a pop-up that says "A problem has occurred in the Digital Rights Management component of this application. The exact error code is: 0xC00D274A."

I've seen this on Windows 7, 8, and even Windows 10 machines running legacy media software. A client last month had it on a Windows 10 PC trying to play WMA files from a 2009 backup. The file looked fine, but the DRM license store had gone missing or got corrupted during a system update.

What's Actually Going On

The DRM (Digital Rights Management) component in Windows stores licenses in a hidden folder called DRM inside %PROGRAMDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\DRM. That folder contains a file named drmstore.hds—it's the secure store holding all your content licenses. When that file gets corrupted, deleted by a cleaner tool, or simply doesn't exist (common after a fresh Windows install), the DRM subsystem can't find it and throws error 0xC00D274A.

The real fix is to reset the DRM store. Windows will recreate it the next time you try to play DRM content. You don't need to re-download anything—just re-acquire the license. If the store is completely missing, you skip right to that reset.

The Fix: Reset the DRM Secure Store

1. Close any open media apps—Windows Media Player, Zune software, or whatever is throwing the error. If it's running, the DRM files are locked.
2. Open an admin Command Prompt. Hit the Start button, type cmd, right-click "Command Prompt", and choose "Run as administrator".
3. Delete the DRM store files. Run these commands one by one:
   

   net stop "Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service"
   net stop "Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service"
   takeown /f "%PROGRAMDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\DRM" /r /d y
   icacls "%PROGRAMDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\DRM" /grant Administrators:F /t
   rd /s /q "%PROGRAMDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\DRM"

   Don't worry about the "access denied" warnings—the rd command will wipe the folder once permissions are fixed.

4. Recreate the empty DRM folder (Windows expects it to exist):
   

   mkdir "%PROGRAMDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\DRM"

5. Restart the services you stopped:
   

   net start "Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service"

6. Open Windows Media Player and try to play the file again. It will prompt you to get a new license—click OK and follow the on-screen steps. In most cases, the license is re-acquired automatically from the content provider's server.

If That Doesn't Work

Two things to check:

• Date and time sync. DRM licenses are time-sensitive. If your system clock is off by more than a few minutes, license acquisition fails. Set it to sync automatically with time.windows.com.
• Content provider shutdown. If the store you bought the music from no longer exists (like the old MSN Music store), you're out of luck—no server to hand out fresh licenses. In that case, you might need to strip the DRM using a third-party tool, but that's your call legally.

I've used this fix on at least a dozen machines over the years. It works every time the problem is purely a missing or corrupted secure store. Give it a shot.