How-To Geek
Fixing When Windows Media Player Library Won’t Let You Add Files
If you’ve been experiencing the problem where you can’t add files to Windows Media Player’s library no matter what you do, then you probably have a corrupted database, and you’ll need to delete it and then re-add all of your media to the library.
NOTE: These steps will delete files, so you should make a backup of any of these files before you do this, especially if you have purchased music via one of the online music shops. Your music will not be deleted, just the database.
The first thing you’ll need to do is go to Control Panel \ Administrative Tools \ Services for XP and look for the services that start with “Windows Media Player”. (Make sure Media Player is closed too)
Click the stop button for each and make sure that all of the services that start with “Windows Media Player” are stopped before you continue. Next, open up an explorer window and paste in the following path into the address bar.
%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Media Player\
You’ll see a bunch of files in the folder. I’d advise moving all of these files to another directory somewhere else, but you could also delete them if you were daring enough.
Now when you restart Windows Media Player, you should be able to add music to your library again.
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Comments (213)
Programmer by day, geek by night, The Geek, also known as Lowell Heddings, spends all his free time bringing you fresh geekery on a daily basis. You can follow him on Google+ if you'd like.
- Published 07/10/07
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I was about to put a boot through my computer when I happened upon your website. Solved my problem.
Thanks so much Ive had this problem for a few days now
It worked for me! Thanks
THANK YOU!!!
I thought it worked, but then I restarted my computer and the same problem was back! What now?
You guys should really check out that website too if you’re looking for help. It turns out for me I had some sort of attributes set on my files, and if WMP sees the attributes set, it skips the folders.
http://weblogs.asp.net/chuckop/archive/2005/03/18/395139.aspx
Thank very much for your help!
You help me a lot to solve it..
thankyou so much!!
Thnaks a mill!!! so clear and definite, no mesing about!!! You are a legend!!!
I had problems where I couldnt delete playlists or add monitored folders, this fixed the problem….. Why did I not find this solution sooner
Thank you so much. This worked after a few tries. I discovered I was not deleting the media player files in the correct directory. Once I did, it worked just fine.
Thanks for the help.
Thank you so much for the help ! At last it works fine now !
A spot on problem solving. Thanks a million.
Ben
Thanks Man!!!
Great fix, really appreciate your efforts :) Thanks so so much!
If you are having the same problem I was where your media player 11 wasnt adding new files to the media watch list and the list remained empty there is a simple fix for that. I found a website that provided a bunch of good info for the fix. You can find the article at http://zachd.com/pss/pss.html#medialibrary but I am also summin it up here for you.
Make sure all media player related services are not running. In the Task Manager these files are wmplayer.exe, wmpnscfg.exe, and WMPNetwk.exe as far as I know. If you run any WMP plugins in firefox close firefox as well (This includes the WMP plugin and FoxyTunes). Also make sure IE and Media Center(If you have it) are closed.
On XP browse to %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\ and then rename the Media Player folder. Upon re-launching media player your WMP should rebuild this folder with the defaults. This will fix the database files as well allowing you to add new folders and files.
On Vista browse to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft and rename the media player folder. Upon re-launching media player your WMP should rebuild this folder with the defaults. This will fix the database files as well allowing you to add new folders and files.
I hope this helps alot of people out there who have this issue and dont forget to check out http://zachd.com/pss/pss.html#medialibrary for any more media player related info. Also give a thanks to the author of that page if you have time.
– Asagron
Thanks, this is very useful!
Fantastic, thank you… worked a treat
May be a silly question but how do you back up music files… weirdly enough, I’ve never backed up anything before.
Thanks,
Brilliant!
top man, cheers thanks a lot.follow it step by step and it should work for you…im running vista and WMPlayer 11
Asagron, that worked perfectly!!!! thank you!
Thanks, worked for me (vista ulimate, WMP11)
Thanks a million. Worked really well!
I almost gave up on this,… I’ve had the problem for over 4 months… almost scrapped WMP entirely…. Works a treat now… THANKS !
Do you lose music files when doing this though?
No you dont loose files when doing this, you only loose the database and your settings I believe(not sure if settings are reset). Media player will say there are no files in the library, just import in like you were starting Media Player for the first time. Do this by selecting the arrow below Library > then add to library. Laura to back up music files you can do this by burning all the files to a DVD or simply by copying them to another hard drive (external or internal). I recommend backing up to an external Hard Drive as a failure in your system doesnt make it hard to get your files off, you just plug it into another computer via the usb/firewire.
- Asagron
Thank you so much! I have been searching Microsoft’s website for the answer with no success. Thanks to Google AND YOU I finally solved the dilemma. I followed your directions and it worked perfectly. I saved the old files (just in case!) as you suggested and am happy to be able to trashe them. What a relief to be able to add files to the library. That feature has never worked from the start. Now if I could only find a way to delete a file that mysteriously keeps appearing on the desktop after I delete it! Thanks again.
Didn’t work for me. But I found an alternate solution.
Quick description
1. Dump all your music files into a new directory created in your root drive. (C:\New folder)
Do not drag files with their directory, just the files only.
Go back to Windows Media Player and add all these files (Voila!!!) (remember to tell the player where to look)
The quick and dirty way of dragging files to your new directory is to search for *.mp3 (or whatever extension your files have). Select all files found, copy and paste into the new directly.
Although your new music files are now not organised in nice album folders, In Windows Media Player they be arranged accordingly using ID3 tags. Now you can share them and stream them to your PS3, turning it into a mega jukebox. Neat
This didn’t work for me, any suggestions on where to go next?
Awesome fix! I should have come across this page much earlier. Damn, now i am used to winamp. But cannot wait to get back to wmp11.
Thanks a ton!
- Asagron you are a godsend!
Wow thanks guys for giving me credit in solving this issue but it was all the author of that website I linked to, I just reposted the info. If you get a chance goto that site and give the author a big thanks as well.
- Asagron
Awesome advice! worked like a charm
Thanks for your helpful advice on getting media player to accept new files to the library. Much appreciated.
G
Thanx a ton…this is exactly what I needed to do!
I ran into this problem today. Turns out of my AVI files was either corrupt or improperly encoded and Media Player kept trying to read it over and over again. Once I renamed that one file to “.avi.TEST” everything worked out fine.
Brilliant! This solved all my problems streaming to my 360. Thanks a mill!
Thank you! I had a little trouble getting this to work. when i got rid of the files in the folder media player refused to rebuild them but i just deleted the folder entirely and now everything is running great Thank you so much for helping me Winamp was getting on my nerves
Thanks a lot. This method worked lieka charm
THANK YOU SO MUCH ! This was bugging the crap out of me, I spent over an hour looking for some type of answer and could not find anything. That is of course after I found this little tutorial. I could not share or add music, plus WMP could not find my music files for some reason…Again I thank you !
AHH Thank you so much this problem was buggin me so much I finally have music on my 360 now ah THX a LOT. :)
You guys totally saved my life.
Thank you! I didn’t want to have to start using WinAmp!
Hi I have a Vista Premium and my Windows media player wont show live tv I had it working about a week ago but didnt have any volume so I held down the volume + button on the remote control the whole thing closed and now when I open the media player and click on LIVE TV it just minimised the player to my tool bar with out doing anything… hope someone can help its a work computer and I dont want to tell my boss !!
THANK YOU SOOOOOOO MUCH!!!!!
I was having so many problems until I came across this advice!:
1. My playlists were refusing to open
2. I could not delete playlists or songs from the library
3. I could not add any music to the library
4. The player had stopped finding my phone to synchronise with
Your advice has fixed all of these problems! Thank you again.
Didn’t work for me just ended up with empty library but none of the files found during scanning were added. Another site suggested removing System attribute from directories. Tried this too but it didn’t work either. Given up now resorting to non-microsoft applications which have in built database management tools.
Thank you SOOOO Much for this fix. I had installed WMP11 on Vista using some tricks and it was working great for months sharing to my xbox 360s and other devices, about a month ago it just died. Could not share anything. This fixed it up just right and am back runnint 100%, thank you for sharing your knwoledge to help others.
Thank you for the help. It fixed my problem perfectly – much more informative than the Microsoft article (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925718)
This is an awesome website – a technological gold mine for those of us struggling with the “Perfect OS”. I have been going through the fixes, tricks, and tweaks for about a week.
Too late on this one though, I had already switched to Winamp for music and find it nuch more friendly than the geekanese WMP. Furthermore, it can play midi files that WMP trips over (thinks they are mis-formatted).
Thanks for the help. Once I found your article, my problem was solved in 20 minutes. The step by step guide worked great. Your solution was a tremendous time and frustration saver.
Great guide! It works with WMP 12 in Windows 7 as well… I was almost going to send feedback to Microsoft saying about that when I thought to search on Google… and it seems it isn’t a 7 bug at all! Thanks!
Thanks a million. This may be an old guide, but as the user above also pointed out, the guide still applies to solve the problem when you install Windows 7 and use Windows Media Player 12.
Thanks a Ton i was about to chuck this laptop off a cliff and you advice fixed the problem first shot thanks again.
THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!
Thank You! Helped me with WMP12 on Windows 7 too.
god bless u. after searching and rebooting i havent found why i could not save music but now wow just wow u saved me !!!
OMG THANK YOU SO MUCH i have been trying to fix this for at least a year and not done it OMG THANK YOU ::D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D
Had a problem NOT with adding files to the library, but deleting files from the library. Followed these instructions and worked like a charm. Was able to delete the unwanted songs from the library.
Thanks.
Good Advice. Able to load pictures and music into the media library. But unable to load video files into the library. Individually listed the folder to monitor for media files. Computer scans but not loading files into the library. video files can be played using file, open command. Please advice how to load video files to the library
Loads WMV files and not VOB files in its video library. Using XP Prof. Pl. advice
It workd
Spot on advice, Worked like a charm, Many thanks
Running vista ultimate WMP11
worked a charm! god that was annoying the hell out of me
thanks bro
Thank you sooooo much !!!!!!! It really worked !!!!
Thank you!! Worked like a charm! And it only took a few seconds!!!
OMG! SUCCESS!!
And it kept all my ratings too!
You are my new hero, Thank you!
THANKSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS! ((((((((((:
I just done that but it hasn’t worked for me :S….
I cant save playlists.
I cant add any files to my media library.
it plays files fine but just wont let me save playlists which is quite annoying, ive deleted everything out that folder but the problems still there, i dont know what to do! help me
thank you sooooooo much
have been struggling to fix this problem
but finally i did it, and thx to u :)
Wow thank you so much for posting this and thank you to the author of
I have been putting up with this for MONTHS and I am extremely appreciative of this help. Thank you all
You are freakin awesome, im greatly appreciate it, thanx once again!
Thanks so much for this tip…..once I restarted wmp, my files were found immediately.
Thanks
So, so helpful. Thank you.
Thanks a bunch mate, was having major issues, fixed now, once again, Thanks!!!
AWESOME!! Thank you so much, it worked!
I have been dealing with a corrupt library on my media player since march! I also have a microsoft Zune. Since my library got corrupt (anyone know how this happens?), the zune software acted dumb.
Before restoring my WMP 11 library, I backup’ed my library to two external hardrives (I have 65 GB of music) and uninstalled the zune software.
I just got done fixing my corrupt library and now plan to reinstall the zune software. I really hope this works.
Thanks for helping me. I have bookmarked this site.
Wish me luck.
thanks for the info, works like a charm
Thanks man
Wow, you are a savior. I was getting to the point of breaking my keyboard I was so angry. Thank you very much
Thank you soooo much!
I thought I was losing the plot. I just couldn’t get my music to play in Windows Media Player after it became corrupted. Wish I had found your website last week – you are a star!!!! Yeah! I can listen to hours of my music again!
I went in and disabled sharing via Windows Services. Then restarted WMP. All my folder monitors came right back up. I have not renabled sharing yet but I hope it will work again. BTW I had just swapped out a drive and replaced it with a bigger drive prior to this problem.
Marvellous. Worked a treat. Thanks so much for the help
I went through all the steps only to find nothing but an empty skin folder in that directory. there were no files that even remotely seemed like they might be database files for windows media player 11 just an empty folder. I know exactly were my music files are & i keep trying to add them to my library but no success. the last time I had this problem my computer rebooted after an update & it moved all my music from my users folder to my the all users folders, but this is not the case this time. dose Microsoft just hate hate me or something? :P
Wow, absolutely amazing, i been breaking my haed trying to solve this issue, thanks a mill, really appreciate this help!
This doesn’t Help me, You see, It finds the files and i just doesn’t add it to the windows media player 11 model. it works for the 10 version, but not 11. when i upgrade, it usually adds the files from my previous library, but didn’t, i went to add them and it added everything BUT what i wanted…
i did all the steps up to the part where you are suppose to open up another window and paste the path into the address bar but when i did that it wanted me to click on something else as if i was trying to find something and so i did know what to do and the folders did not show up like they were suppose to, will someone please tell what to do after that, becasue this problem with my media player has been driving me nuts for a very long time
Awesome. Thanks so much!!!! Worked a treat.
Wow it works, thanks! I had this problem with WMP 12 in Win7. I was going to have to resort to iTunes (ugh), but now I can keep WMP. I just wish they would let us go back to WMP 11.
Thanks!
Also had this problem with Windows 7 WMP12, i could not add mp3 files lots of corrupt deleted mp3 files still showed in WMP12 that could not be deleted also i could not copy paste album art.
Excellent problem solved THANKYOU !!
Thanks my boy…
You are the Soft…. The Micro-Soft.. hehe..
Cheers
FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A problem that I had gets solved strickly step by step with no other problems popping up to detour me
in any of the steps. This web site is the BOMB!! Thanks alot I mean a really lot.
http://www.blogsdna.com/2409/downgrade-windows-media-player-12-to-wmp-11-on-windows-7.htm
windows media player 11 for windows 7 hop it helps
For some reason Windows 7′s WMP wouldn’t add files, but this fixed it right away.
i cant add labels, my library is one big list.
if i open the advanced editor for labels everything is grey and i cant do anything.
do you nkow something to do agains this?
cuz if i want to listen to a certain album i have to select the songs from this huge list and then let it play only those.
thank you!
Whoever you are you are a genius!!! God bless You! I was thinking about going back to Media player 11! You saved me a ton of grief! Now I love WMP 12!!! Thank you so so much!
I found a solution too. I deleted WMP and added iTunes. Now if I want to add music to my library, I simply browse to the folder and add the songs. Thank you Apple for making a product that doesn’t do stuff I don’t want it to, and never does stuff I Do want.
Worked for WMP12 on Win7 Pro. Thank you!
WOW this worked perfect!! I also have Windows 7 running media player 12 and these steps got rid of off the renamed files that didnt exist anymore in my media library! Ive been trying to figure this out for awhile, thanks again!
Worked for WMP12 on Win7 Ultimate. Cheers geek fella!
thanks a whole lot, what causes this
OK I think I have a new problem but similar…
I couldn’t add new music to my library and tried the direction on this site.I could then add more music …
problem solved but only temporariliy.
Once MP11 rebuilt my library, the problem returned.
So every time I want to add new music, I have to dump the old library database files and rebuild.
This is a problem as it takes three days to rebuild as I have a large music libary.
Any Ideas?
Thanks so much. This was a lifesaver and it only took about 15 seconds!
You are a genious ! It worked perfectly
Thanks!!! You save my day!!!!
Thankyou, far more useful than microsoft website. Have now added your site as a Favourite.
Regards
Andrew
Thanx i’ve had that problem for sevral weeks now and it’s finally fixed it :)
Thanks a zillion.
Un-freakin’ believable. Your fix worked and so slick and fast.
My PC is a new laptop running Win 7 (3 weeks old). Not sure why WMP didn’t work properly but it behaved badly right from the start. I think the problem might have been that I set up I-Tunes before setting up WMP.
thanks a lot, it really helped me :)
Yes! Thank you been looking for this for ages. been using that stupid itunes !
oh and by the way i was using windows 7 and works fine. just if anyone is wondering :)
Thanks mate you save my ass. LOL
Thank you very much! Worked wonders with windows 7.
Thank you SO MUCH! I was mad that when I chose to add music, it only would do a SMALL portion of what was in the folder I told it to add from…
I tried the steps above to rebuilt my folder.. it loads some mp3s but leaves out the rest! :( It cant seem to tranfer some songs from my p.c. any help would be appreciated alot! Thanks . jess
AT LAST SOMEONE WHO KNOWS WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT, STRAIGHTFORWARD AND DOES THE JOB !!
Hi, thanks for this tip – it worked perfectly, first time round.
Good sdvice…but i have another problem..i’m on an older version of window’s media player (version 9) and when i go to search for a song i know is in the database..it returns the results as not found..anyone know the reason for this? plz help…thank you
Btw i’m on xp sp3 home edition
You sir, have saved my day.
oh… my…. heavens….
I wanted to pop in a bunch of music i d/l onto my SD card. Well, i transferred the music (it was on my media center) to my laptop, but i couldn’t get them to be added to the library. i tried EVERYTHING. I had originally set up wmp to look at my cloud drive, and it wouldn’t look anywhere else, including music i added into the cloud drive. i’ve tried uninstalling, reinstalling, you name it, i tried it.
I actually gave up for like a month and started using a different program (i had wanted to add it to wmp so that i could edit names/cover art/etc). But i decided i wanted to listen to my music on laptop rather than slacker, and i was frustrated yet again.
Seriously. thank you sooooooooooo much.
And ps, when i started wmp back up, i didn’t even have to point it to “My Music” it went right to it!! (which is what it was SUPPOSED to be doing in the first place!!)
THANKYOU THANKYOU THANKYOU THANKYOU THANKYOU THANKYOU THANKYOU THANKYOU THANKYOU THANKYOU THANKYOU THANKYOU THANKYOU THANKYOU THANKYOU THANKYOU THANKYOU THANKYOU THANKYOU THANKYOU THANKYOU !!!
I have a Creative Zen, and accidentally deleted the majority of my music in my computer library via it’s software (Creative Centrale) For the last few weeks all I’ve had in my Library was files with Unknown Artist, and a couple of random ones thrown in… not a clue why. And it would not let me delete them, or edit them, so I was stuck with about 6 tracks that didn’t even work.
But now it all perfect and neat and can restore all my music!!!
THANKYOU , LIFE SAVER !!!
Thanks a bunch. all of the info helped. I backed up the files in my media player folder onto a flash drive, renamed the folder, and wmp is doing more now than what it did earlier.
Thanks!
Very Helpful and easy solution.
THANKS YOU, works AMAZING with Windows 7 :)
Thnaks you so much i was abut to reformat my whole windows because WMP12 is a pain in the arse. This also help with windows media player not detecting portable players. i was almost removing the hir off my head with this issue and then it lost it’s library. i started backing up my data to re-format and it solved everything.. Thanks so much
I’m so glad I found this, I was losing my mind. THANK YOU!
thank you, this fixed my problem
God Bless you! My mom had been struggling for month trying to get her wmp to work and all I all did was what you said and I had it up a going in no time! Thanks !
Thank you! This saved me from having to reinstall everything!
Nice job! It worked perfectly.
you sir are a god
This has not resolved my problem of not all folders being added. I have deleted and reset the library several times and consistently some folders are not added Nothing different about them from the others that I can see.
Why
What is the fix?
OMG…. I love you guys… i’ve been having this problem for like a whole freaking year….. and finally something to fix it… i gave up the first like 2 weeks but decided to tackle it again today…. you guys made my day…. thanks!!!! once again… i love you guys
thnks man
thx a lot… at last my problems solved
I kept have file unknown with no reason and i can’t deleted it..
but now it fixed..
once again thx
Thank you so much! You saved my new DV4 with Windows 7 from an inevitable plummet to the street below. Worked excellent.
These instructions worked great for me–thanks very much–but the only file I deleted was the CurrentDatabase_360 file, restarted, and it worked. I don’t know if you want to update your instructions, but it wasn’t necessary for me to delete all the contents of that folder.
Win7, WMP 12 – my issues is that when i click on Organize | Libraries | Music – it does nothing. i cannot drag my music onto any WMP windows either. i have my music in a non-standard folder, so i need to tell WMP which folder to monitor… but i can’t do that because it doesn’t even open that dialog.
this fix did not work for me…. any other suggestions? i tried the system attribute thing also, which also did not work. also checked out the KB article someone posted here, that was simply this hot-to-geek fix, but without the two screen shots.
…?
i tried this fix plus about 3 others (almost all had changed the registry). none worked to fix my problem.
will be uninstalling WMP and installing iTunes. it’s free too.
Thanks so much, this fixed a very annoying problem I had with WMP 12 for Windows 7.
The video folder of my media library would not display any video files. To show them I had to reassign the vid folder at every startup of WMP. If I closed and reopened WMP the files were gone and the folder displayed only some old corrupted files I removed ages ago.
But this worked like a charm!
NB: In the WMP map, only the FILES need to be removed, you can leave the folders. Even though the guide only speaks of files, I wasn’t sure files in subfolders shouldn’t be deleted.
THANK YOU so much!! I thought I had a virus or something but the scanner didn’t detect anything. The instructions were so simple to follow and it worked!! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!
Thanks, I cound get my head around why it wasn’t working!
lv u
`thanks soooo much. hated media player for like 30 minutes
This worked for me too, thank you muchly. I didn’t realize that the actual library file itself could get corrupted, I was looking through all sorts of APPDATA but didn’t know what I needed and what I didn’t.
Worked like a charm, and I didn’t back anything up either. Perhaps a little reckless, haha.
Thanks a bunch for writing this. I had wanted to remove the sample music from my computer, and I just deleted them right from the music folder. While the files were gone, they still showed up in WMP, although they were unplayable. This solved the problem beautifully, as everything else I had tried didn’t work. Thank You!
Yep,
Very much a problem in Vista and the solution worked perfectly. It was probably a result of my efforts to clean up and reorganise the data on my drive, but I fail to see why there’s no refresh option in WMP nor for that matter why it refused to even display the file in teh directorty when Windows Explorer cound see them.
Thank You very much
Oh my gosh, thank you so much for figuring this out! I was about ready to destroy my whole WMP12 because it would not remove files I had deleted from library. Thank you thank you thaaaaank you!
Muchas gracias
la información me resulto muy util, quedo enormemente agradecido, de no ser por tu información minimo habia desparecido mi windows media
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS, whoever you are. <3
Since my WMP library disappeared about a month ago I've been searching for a solution all over and I couldn't find one that worked. Finally, I found this and it did the trick. Thank you so much. :)
what if u don’t have admin rights??
Just what i needed.
Didn’t understand the explorer window bit (%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Media Player\) – i just found the folder in explorer and did what you said.
Great result. Thanks again.
absolutly smashed it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
I’m not sure if this fix will work for my problem, i have a netbook with windows 7 and WMP12. because i dont have a cd drive i have to add music files with a USB flash drive. Right now when i try to add the files off of the flash drive, windows media player says that i have older different files than what are actually on the drive. if i go into the folders of the drive though, it has the right files, but i can’t get it to come off of the drive onto WMP library. what do i do??? :’(
worked fine for me as well. thanks!
you’re my hero!
when i start music player it shows music library update then NO FILE FOUND+tell me the solution
Dude, you are THE MAN! Worked like a charm on WMP12 for Win7.
Thank you so much, Couldn’t stream any new files to my 360 this work like a charm, does take awhile to add all files back be patient
Thank you so much! Worked on Windows 7. @Chris you can also drag and drop files onto WMP which is much faster.
Guys, please keep up the good work for this forum has most of the time solved my problems.
THANK YOU !
Works great! Thanks man.
Thanks for this, was pulling my hair out trying to figure out how to get it to work!
Such a simple answer and it worked like a charm. Thanks!
Thank you!
Another happy comment here, many thanks
trims..its worked
thank you this works finally my husband can enjoy his music again!
I recently have had alot of problems with my pc in the regards of windows media player. One of the new problems that popped up a few days ago was what you have posted above. I was unable to fix it myself and decided to look online and never thought I would find the answer. I honestly cannot emphasize how much I appreciate and thank your for putting this solution online. I do not have tv service only internet so I download everything I watch and must play it through my xbox 360 via file sharing. The problem crippled my time I had to relax until you fixed it. Once again thank you so much for taking the time and going out of your way to help other find the solution that you already had.
-Alex
Was hoping that it will work, but I am one of the few unlucky ones where this didn’t work :(
I’ve been trying to get rid of some invalid playlist records left over in Windows Media Player for some time. I had backed up all my music files and cleaned out my playlist folder. However old playlists that were in my music folders that I had removed off my system still remained. All my attempts to delete the invalid records left over in the playlist panel failed, (including re-introducing the playlist files to their original locations and trying to re-delete them). Then I stumbled onto your post. All I had to do was go Delete the files in the specified location and all was well.
Thanks very much. Media Player is like new again.
Thanks very much for sharing this info….the internet needs people like you and the site you got it from.
Worked for my Win7 PC with Media player.
No sooner did I delete all the files and started media player, the indexing started.
Makes me want to switch to Linux badly
I use WMP12 and it seems that no VOB music videos can be added to library, all other formats do except VOB. Can you help me with that?
Thank you!
Thanks for helping with this problem. I was a little more daring and deleted the corrupted data base.Restarted WMP and everything is working fine. Much appreciated…:)
after the problem solved, do I restart the “windows media player networking sharing service”?
Kudos, super-worked for me!
Thank you so much dude!
You’re so friend! hehe
Yor blog is on my favorites bar.
Best regards!
Thank you very much. I was started to get very angry towards my computer.
You rock. Thanks for this!
Yea, great advice for a crap product. Delete everything so you can reinstall it and use it a few more days or a week until it screws up again.
How do you restard Windows Media Player on Windows 7?
Worked great!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thanks a million. can i delete the file i saved them to, or is there something in there i will need later? it got rid of the bad files and my music and wanted videos still there. THANKS
I was having this problem for videos in WMP12 on Win7. It seems as though if you add a library then delete the contents of that library from WMP, re adding the library doesn’t re-cache the contents.
Your solution worked a treat… Thank you!
thanks allot man. now i can’t even open up windows media player anymore. you instructions were incorrect. now i have no way to listen to my music
Thanx a lot buddy!!
I’ve windows 7 and it worked as a charm..
Just 1question though..
Can I now delt the files that I backed up from
%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Media Player\
Perfect solution!
I was skeptical since this was written four years ago and for Vista, but it worked like a charm on my brand new Windows 7 laptop!
thanks!
Brilliant!! I’ve got Windows 7 and it works brilliantly. My library is updating as I speak.
I’d been tearing my hair out for hours trying to work this problem out.
Many thanks!!
Thank you so much! You’d have thunk that Microsoft would have fixed this problem with Windows 7 and WMP 12, but alas no. But, your fix worked fine, even if the path to the WMP files wasn’t exactly correct in Windows 7, but I knew where to find it. I am so relieved that finally, the library is updating and sticking! Every time I opened WMP 12, it kept showing me only the default files, WHICH I HAD DELETED! Now, they are finally gone and my music files are there! Thank you again!
Good fix, not what I was looking for but good fix. I only see 100 of my songs on my xbox from my media player when I actually have near 300 on my media player.
Thank You so much! I’ve been trying to figure this out for days now. I upgrade from xp to vista, then to windows 7 and it was hidden but this helped me find it and delete it finally. I deleted the old file after the new one was built and so far it works fine…Thank you once again :)
Thank you guys you information was quite helpful, my windows media player is now loading files. God bless…
sweet. thank you..finding this page was harder than fixing it unfortunately :/
thank u Asagron u did it!!
THANKS!! This has been driving me insane now for awhile and now its all working without any problems.
Cheers Man, Got rid of my headache! good on you mate!
Man, YOU are THE savior of music files! I got daring and just deleted the whole list of 31 items. I figured; what the heck, it wasn’t working anyway-how much worse could it get?! You method fixed everything! All my files re-downloaded just like you said they should. Thank you so much! It took me about 5 years to build this music collection and I’m sooooo glad I stumbled across your site! You’re the BOMB Man!
At the risk of being redundant – you rock. Thanks for sharing and helping.
thanks very much, it worked very fine with me
wow I have done this before but forgotten how. Worked twice for me!!!
Thanks bro!
Hi,
I usually dont write comments but because my mediaplayer is fixed now so I will this time only…..
THANK YOU VERY MUCH for posting this. I had the mediaplayer library information problem on Windsows 7 and Now it is fixed..
Thanks again
Saffron :D
Thanks Asagron – your “rename” fixed my problem!
Holy Jesus balls! Thank you so much. I’ve been trying to fix this problem for a couple months now.
thank u so much. it worked perfectly in no time. u saved me time on reinstallin windows 7. XD
Thanks so much Asagron that worked perfectly
THANK YOU!!! I thought I was going mad that I couldn’t add files to WMP. Done it for years soooo…. WTF?!?! Followed your lead and ALL BETTER without me having to locate the files or anything. Awesome dude. You rock!
Thanks a bunch…. it worked like a charm
You are SO awesome!
Thanks a lot! Also works when you can’t remove files from the library!
Excellent, this was puzzling me for hours!!!
Thank you so much. It works for me. Great
Thanks man, you are awesom!