Since I put together this new rig and installed Win7 on it, I've been using Windows Media Player to play backups of old mp3's and to rip CD's. In the past I've always used 3rd party software for ...

I've used EAC to do this. Instead of ripping individual tracks, tell it you want to "Copy Image & CUE Sheet." That will make a single WAV file of the entire CD, then you can convert to MP3 from that.