Songs do not appear in the Windows Media Player library

Anonymous
2009-11-10T05:30:29+00:00

WIndows Media Player 12 not adding songs

I got my new PC with Windows 7 this afternoon, and copied over 10,000 songs into My Music folder.  None of these songs will show up in Windows Media Player 12 song library. My Music folder is one of the default save location in WMP Libraries.  Only 3 songs are showing up in the Library, and these are the three on the Public Music folder.  Yet when I add a song to the Public Music folder, it gets added to the Library. Then when I close WMP and re-open it, we're back to the original 3 songs!  I spent an hour with HP support this evening and did not get any where.  I have tried system restore.  I have tried restoring media library.  I think my WMP may be corrupt.  Any thoughts on what I'm missing here?

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Music, photos, and video

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Anonymous
2010-11-08T18:58:41+00:00

I read this on another topic, try it.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Hi,

This problem occurs because the Windows Media Player library database has become corrupted. 

To resolve this problem, clear the Windows Media Player database. To do this, follow these steps:

  1. Exit Windows Media Player.
  2. Click Start, click Run, type %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Media Player, and then click OK.
  3. Select all the files in the folder, and then click Delete on the File menu.

      Note You do not have to delete the folders that are in this folder.

 4. Restart Windows Media Player.

Note Windows Media Player automatically rebuilds the database. 

If this does not resolve the problem, clear the Windows Media Player database cache files. To do this, follow these steps:

   1. Exit Windows Media Player.

   2. Click Start, click Run, type %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft, and then click OK.

   3. Select the Media Player folder, and then click Delete on the File menu.

   4. Restart Windows Media Player.

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Anonymous
2010-12-18T07:21:53+00:00

I had same symptoms as cturner003 in a 64 bit Win 7 environment.  But the problem was entirely different from everythin I read up to Nov 2010.   As I started looking into the file properties under the details tab, I noticed that all of these files had file attributes 'R' and 'S' set.  Turns out that somehow all of my music got marked as 'Read Only' \ 'System' files when I restored them.  My fault I'm sure.  Tried all of the solutions up to the Nov 2010 entries to no avail.  Finally discovered the issue.  Once I changed the file attributes, all of the music started showing up in WMP.  Should have picked that up sooner.

For these files, I couldn't find any way to change the attributes except through the command prompt.

1.  Click Start, Click All Programs, ClickAccessories.  Thenright clickCommand Prompt and select 'Run as administrator'.

2.  Type Attrib /? to get familiar with the attributes command.

3.  My music is stored in the path c:\users\glym\music.  So I fixed the problem with the following command string:attrib -r -s c:\users\glym\music\*.* /s /d

  1. Once the file attributes are cleaned up, make sure Media Player is closed.  ClickStart , ClickRun, Copy and paste in: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft, ClickOK
  2. Delete the 'Media Player' folder completely.  That gets rid of the database and the cached entries.

6.  Restart Media Player . . .  Bingo!

Thanks Microsoft for several useful Knowldege Base articles that I plagiarized here.

 

 I was having an issue like this. No new tv shows I was recording and adding to my videos folder would show on one pc, but showed fine on two others, all win 7 64bit home prem.

steps 4 5 and 6  worked like a charm for me. I didnt do anything but steps 4,5 and 6 Thank you.

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  1. Anonymous
    2010-03-08T21:43:39+00:00

    Besides my post above with a proposed answer, I also found this information very useful and I have now fully resolved my problem with Windows Library. Let me first say that I found that certain folders of music tracks were missing , it was a hit or miss proposition, but was able to track it down to being FOLDER dependent issue. I then stumbled into the resolution to this when installing an application (unrelated to this specific discussion - but turns out to be very relevant), it kept giving me a 1327 error. As it turns out, that lead me to the final resolution to my issue, my library now fully rebuilds itself each and every time, no further problems.

    That said, here's the final piece of information that lead me to resolve my issue - If you have a problem with adding files to Library in Windows Media Player the User Shell Files may have invalid character. This is also same fix if you encounter an error 1327 when installing a program.

    Here is the information that lead me to resolving the issue. "At run time, the Windows Installer Service checks the registry location HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders to resolve folder paths of built-in System Folder properties, such as [WindowsVolume], [MyPicturesFolder], [SystemFolder], etc. If one of the folder paths in the above registry key points to a location or drive that does not exist on the machine, error 1327 occurs with the name of the folder specified in it. "

    Using REGEDIT I simply edited the paths to default values. I'm still not sure what caused them to be invalid in the first place. I then went back into the Libraries and re-added the additional folders (and removed the default folders). All is now well once again.

    If you are missing isolated files in your library this is probably not the answer (read my original message above instead). If you have complete folders missing this may be the resolution you were seeking.

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  2. Anonymous
    2010-03-07T18:07:08+00:00

    I just took the past hour to do some research and learned that wmp 12 will not add a file to the library unless it has curtain album info. Depending on the amount of songs you have it could be a simple job to edit them to include all the info. I used Tag&Rename, download from cnet HERE. I have about 12,000 songs and it took me only about an hour to finish. All I fixed was the:

    1.Title

    2.Artist

    3.Album name

    4.Year

    5.Track number

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  3. Anonymous
    2010-03-07T16:47:03+00:00

    Jin Chen,

    I tried this and it still did not work.

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