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
    2015-01-18T14:32:32+00:00

    I just discovered an additional factor on this, tested on Windows 7 Ultimate: Windows doesn't register the file changes if you transfer them from another computer via a network connection. What you need to do is create an empty scratch folder as an "intermediate" folder:

    1. Create an empty scratch folder on the SAME drive on which you store the media files.
    2. Copy your new files to the scratch folder via the network, instead of directly to the media folder.
    3. Switch to the computer on which the files are stored and move the files from the scratch folder to your actual media folder. Since you are only moving the files on the same drive it will be super fast because nothing needs to be copied -- you're just changing the pointers to the file location.
    4. Open Windows Media Player and select Organize > Apply Media Information Changes. (This may actually not be necessary -- usually the changes appear instantly as soon as you've done the copy from the scratch folder).

    After this all new files should appear immediately. Note that for this to work you must also have both the Indexing service and the Windows Search Service active. If either of them are switched off Windows will still not see the media changes.

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-01-13T00:09:38+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.

    Worked great once I rebooted in to Safe Mode removing the folder, then rebooting standard...Thanks!

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-12-18T02:22:38+00:00

    I had the same exact problem. But since this was 5 years ago. People who are looking at this now, will have a better understanding. LOL.

    -Go to Start Menu

    -Click "Computer"

    -Locate and Click on DVD RW Drive

    -On the top bar it should say, "Name, Date Modified, Type, and Size." 

    • Locate Type

    -If it is a CD-R, the type of file should be in MP3 Format. (MP3 File) 

    -If it says something else, Delete the file and locate the file that is not a shortcut. CD-R's don't hold shortcuts like USB Drives do.

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