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Windows media player bug
- Thread starter genetech
- Start date
heatlesssun
Extremely [H]
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- Nov 5, 2005
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- 44,154
Never have seem this. My are all related to album art which is just whack in WMP.
Never seen it wipe out a library or playlists on its own. Are the files from a shared network directory? Does it delete the songs from the drive or just kill the DB? When it wipes the playlists, does it delete the actual playlists from the drive or, again, just wipe it from the DB?
Do you have WMP set to auto-add info?
When it does wipe the DB, does it pick them back up on an auto-rescan? Can you manually add the songs back to the DB if it doesn't auto-rescan? I don't really have an answer, but these are standard questions to ask that might lead to a better solution.
Also, check here for a MS article on WMP DB corruption and here for another quick blurb... I think they both have the same solution so it might be worth a shot.
WMP uses a separate database for keeping track of all the associated tags and images. It's actually one of my chief complaints about it but it's the player that I use, pretty much exclusively.
Do you have WMP set to auto-add info?
When it does wipe the DB, does it pick them back up on an auto-rescan? Can you manually add the songs back to the DB if it doesn't auto-rescan? I don't really have an answer, but these are standard questions to ask that might lead to a better solution.
Also, check here for a MS article on WMP DB corruption and here for another quick blurb... I think they both have the same solution so it might be worth a shot.
WMP uses a separate database for keeping track of all the associated tags and images. It's actually one of my chief complaints about it but it's the player that I use, pretty much exclusively.
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The songs are still on my computer, no network. It just wipes them from the players records and i cant put them back in. Auto nor manual work although the zune player works still i just don't know why WMP would just lose total memory, then keep it lost
If I'm understanding correctly, songs are local to the computer. The songs are wiped from the DB (by WMP for some reason) and can't be added back, manually or by letting WMP monitor folders on its own.
If you are using Zune player software, IIRC, it's DB is entirely separate from the one that WMP uses (another complaint of mine, actually) so that would explain why the Zune software isn't affected.
Sounds to me just like a corrupt DB. Try the stuff in the above link and see what happens - personally, I'd clear the DB and the cache just to be on the safe side.
If all else fails, there's instructions for uninstalling WMP but that would be considered very last resort.
bigdogchris
Fully [H]
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- Feb 19, 2008
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- 18,734
I have a WMP question also. It happened to me in WMP 11 and 12 on Vista and 7. When I go to a folder and press Play All. Sometimes it only plays a couple songs then stops. Sometimes it plays all the songs.
Any clue why it would be so random. I look at the play list and it shows all the songs but only plays a couple.
Any clue why it would be so random. I look at the play list and it shows all the songs but only plays a couple.
Genetech, I'm glad that worked out for you.
Chris, that's a little strange. So you have a folder with a bunch of music files in it. You navigate to the folder then hit the "Play All" button at the top of the screen (or wherever it happens to be for you). WMP then queues up the file list to be played and starts playing the first file. Then, at some point, as it ends it's current song and advances to the next one, it won't play it.
Will it play any of the rest of the songs in the playlist? Is it repeatable in the same directory (i.e. if you close WMP will and then Play All in the same directory, are the same files skipped or does it play a few more)? Do you use the WMP library at all to play music files and, if so, can you add the files to the library and play them from there or does it skip them there as well?
The only thing that I can really come up with deals with how the file is tagged. Since you are queuing the files directly from a folder into WMP, I'm wondering if WMP is taking a look at all the tag info and is starting to categorize the music for you. This might happen if you've got WMP set to add media files to the library when played and might also happen if you've got WMP set to download media info automatically.
It's possible that what it's doing is loading a group of files, starts to play the first one, then checks the rest of the files to see if they are already in the library and, if not, then adding them and sorting them into their correct genres. If it's doing that, then it might not play the next file in line because it's not where WMP expects it to be but you ought to be able to find it in a given genre in the music library. Then, when you use the Play All function again, it'd probably be ok. It might be that the files that work fine from the get go are already loaded in.
It's also possible that there's confusion with how it's reading the tag info that's present in the file if WMP doesn't have an entry for it already. WMP only reads the tag info the first time then it builds a custom DB entry for the file, so any strangeness between what WMP reads and what it expects may cause an issue. ***EDIT: The more I think about it, because it happens across two different OS's and two different players, tends to point to some strangeness with the file itself. What you might want to do is use something like MP3Tag to knock out any extraneous ID3 info (WMP won't use a lot of it anyway) to see if that causing the problem. It may also be a licensing issue but you didn't mention DRM'd files.
I'm kind of just throwing out ideas here so it's not much help. You might play around with the settings (especially auto-fix tag info) and some of the library stuff to see if that helps. I've tested a few of the directories that I've got here (I normally don't queue music that way; it's all in the library already) and, even across network drives, I don't seem to be having any issue. I'd try to narrow it down to a few files and see if it's consistently repeatable on those files. You might also be able to clear the cache (as given above) and see if that makes any difference - again, just ideas.
Chris, that's a little strange. So you have a folder with a bunch of music files in it. You navigate to the folder then hit the "Play All" button at the top of the screen (or wherever it happens to be for you). WMP then queues up the file list to be played and starts playing the first file. Then, at some point, as it ends it's current song and advances to the next one, it won't play it.
Will it play any of the rest of the songs in the playlist? Is it repeatable in the same directory (i.e. if you close WMP will and then Play All in the same directory, are the same files skipped or does it play a few more)? Do you use the WMP library at all to play music files and, if so, can you add the files to the library and play them from there or does it skip them there as well?
The only thing that I can really come up with deals with how the file is tagged. Since you are queuing the files directly from a folder into WMP, I'm wondering if WMP is taking a look at all the tag info and is starting to categorize the music for you. This might happen if you've got WMP set to add media files to the library when played and might also happen if you've got WMP set to download media info automatically.
It's possible that what it's doing is loading a group of files, starts to play the first one, then checks the rest of the files to see if they are already in the library and, if not, then adding them and sorting them into their correct genres. If it's doing that, then it might not play the next file in line because it's not where WMP expects it to be but you ought to be able to find it in a given genre in the music library. Then, when you use the Play All function again, it'd probably be ok. It might be that the files that work fine from the get go are already loaded in.
It's also possible that there's confusion with how it's reading the tag info that's present in the file if WMP doesn't have an entry for it already. WMP only reads the tag info the first time then it builds a custom DB entry for the file, so any strangeness between what WMP reads and what it expects may cause an issue. ***EDIT: The more I think about it, because it happens across two different OS's and two different players, tends to point to some strangeness with the file itself. What you might want to do is use something like MP3Tag to knock out any extraneous ID3 info (WMP won't use a lot of it anyway) to see if that causing the problem. It may also be a licensing issue but you didn't mention DRM'd files.
I'm kind of just throwing out ideas here so it's not much help. You might play around with the settings (especially auto-fix tag info) and some of the library stuff to see if that helps. I've tested a few of the directories that I've got here (I normally don't queue music that way; it's all in the library already) and, even across network drives, I don't seem to be having any issue. I'd try to narrow it down to a few files and see if it's consistently repeatable on those files. You might also be able to clear the cache (as given above) and see if that makes any difference - again, just ideas.