Prevent Windows Media Player Album Art Download

For Media Center users:

I have found the only solution for me is:  Don't use the Music library at all.  Just add an empty folder to it, nothing else (the same with My Pictures.)  (Don't put your music into WMP either! Use another player.)

In addition (for Media Center users) try renaming mcglidhost.exe and ehvid.exe to ehvid.ex_disabled -- in C:\Windows\ehome.  You'll have to take ownership of them first and then change the security for Administrators to Full Access.  You may also have to change the copies in the Windows\winsxs folder (do a search in C:\windows and you'll see them.) If you don't know what I'm talking about don't try this fix.  It's dangerous.  You'll have no thumbnails in Media Center, (but who needs them with List View)!

This stops WMP from scanning for thumbnails and much of the data.  It also stopped wmplayer.exe from starting in the background by itself (seen in the Task Manager.)

Background:

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I am using Media Center and I have no choice about WMP12 being it's primary backbone.  It even loves to scan my TV recordings and create little playlists and thumbnails in it's database.  On top of that it added pictures from my browser-cache to the MCE screen saver slide show!

Every time I test the library, by adding some folders, my computer goes into a scanning frenzy and slows down to a snail's pace.

The read-only file trick won't work because I want to delete them. I don't want 11,500 extra files on my computer (600MB).  That's why I embedded the album art!

The firewall fix won't work because, on my system, it's not downloading this stuff (see my other post earlier.) I also need to download TV guide data from Microsoft so I can't block it.

Disabling the libraries is a shame because Media Center can do some really cool things with them (streaming your music to your smart phone!)  Oh well.

Hoped this helps someone.

I confirm this problem for Media Center (not Player) too! (Win7 SP1)

I simply added music files to library with Media Center.  A few days later there were 300mb of new files in my folders!  These files don't seem to be downloaded.  They were picked up through a scan of my music's embedded album art (they are the same pictures.)  (I have NEVER opened Windows Media Player accept 1 time to disable Internet connected features.)

In addition, Media Center scans and replaces them again each I go back into the Music tab.

Finally, it also archives and compresses them again (another 140Mb) along with old databases (130Mb) in C:\Users%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Media Player\

This is hogging precious resources on my system!  Thousands of small .jpg files make the hard drive very slow. Extracting them from large a music collection requires incredible cpu power that I can't spare.  No fixes I've tried have worked.

-Feeback sent to Microst as well.-

Please fix this problem!

i am so sick of this bug or "feature", whatever you want to brand it. it destroyed days and days worth of high quality artwork downloading and organizing in a matter of seconds. if you have put the registry hack in place, i just wanted to give those who may not know how to do this a quick tip.

it was mentioned that it still makes the files hidden and possibly system files as well. i know it does this for the albumartsmall.jpg, etc.

if your collection has been trashed up, some good ole' dos prompt lovin' can clean the disaster up.

1) open "Command Prompt"

2. if your Music is on the C drive, then don't worry, if it is on another drive, change to that drive by typing the command:    cd x:

 (assuming the drive is X)

3. change to your main music folder. if it's in the default spot, you should be able to end up there by typing:    cd "%username%/My Music"
4. this should hopefully put you in your music folder, which you can verify by doing the directory listing command:   dir
5. if you're in the right folder, then you can use this command to quickly unhide/protect those files by typing this command:   attrib -h -s /a /s *.jpg

this should remove the hidden and system attribute from all of the files in your music folder heirarchy, making them visible and modifiable again.

6. my next step is to usually delete the albumartsmall, etc... so i would then use this command:   del /s albumart*.jpg

this will get rid of the other even smaller junk files that WMP created. you should hopefully be left with folder.jpg in each of your album's folders. the bad news is, if WMP has already had the chance to touch them, they're most likely already in 200x200 resolution, and you're pretty screwed. if you are privileged enough to be in a position to where you still have folder.jpg as 500x500 or whatever... i would suggest protecting them right now by making them read only -- so back at the command prompt

7. type this command and hit enter: attrib +r /s folder.jpg

this will make all folder.jpg files under your main music folder (and any place below that folder structure) read-only. the "/s" parameter means "subdirectories", or in other words, a recursive command that goes into a folder, takes an action, then goes to any folders under that one, then does it again, as needed until it hits the deepest nested folder, then it continues back on the next entry.

for the more savvy, this can be done by a batch file, and with less steps, --- not to mention there is also (tested & working) a way to use the ROBOCOPY dos command to basically mirror your entire mp3 collection folder heirarchy (just the empty folders are created, no files are copied)... then you can make it go through and copy every folder.jpg from each of those folders to this "mirrored" or backup folder heirarchy... in case that in the future, something overwrites these files, you can always do a quick restore by reversing the command to copy the folder.jpg files back.

this is what i did after learning my lesson with WMP and rebuilt my album art collection. once you're done copying you should have your entire music folder structure replicated, with ONLY folder.jpg files populated inside. from there you can zip or rar, however you want to archive it... and now you have a backup copy of your art, in case WMP is ever opened again (god help us all).

if anyone needs clarification on what i just explained, let me know. i could probably just make the scripts up myself, and the user would only have to run them.

So how can i contact WMP team to report them issues (i tried submitting via Microsoft support three times, but never got answer) OR can somebody who is MVP or can contact them make them fix this issue, because there is no player with better UI for windows, but this is totally annoying thing and even with registry hack i don't trust it.

You can try the feedback form at  http://mymfe.microsoft.com/Windows%207/Feedback.aspx?formID=195 , that might be forwarded to the WMP team, but I'm not sure. You can also try reporting this in the Windows 7 SP1 Beta forum .

BTW, most people seem to get pretty good results from applying the registry tweak. Doesn't it work for you?

Tim De Baets

http://www.bm-productions.tk