Updating Your Media Library In WMP12 - How Do You Do It?

I have a large library of music that I've ripped from CD, quite a few rare-ish 12" Dance singles, and some truly rare Classic Rock albums that I ripped onto my computer via the Ion USB turntable. When I transferred songs that I'd had on one of those Passport external hard drives to my laptop, the Windows Media Player 12 Library recorded the song as being in the "My Music" folder on the C drive IN ADDITION TO the Passport path, drive G or something.

My problem is that for many of my songs, there are entries in the library that don't correspond to an available file because I have already transferred all of my music where I want it to be - on the C drive - and any path that was recorded as going to the G drive isn't going to work.

How do I get Windows Media Player to check my Windows 7 computer for available media and get rid of references to files and pathways that no longer exist? I've read through the instructions and done everything they've suggested as far as setting up what folders to monitor, but the phantom entries are still there - and there are THOUSANDS of them. Going through and manually deleting invalid entries from my library would take a very long time.

Can't I just start it over? And if I can, how will that affect the associations I've made from singles I've bought on itunes, and the album that they are from (I rarely buy an entire album, but I still like to have the info from it, album art, etc.)

BTW, I'm a total computer neanderthal; please dumb it down for me.

Thanks so much for any assistance you can provide.

Simply use OGG / OGA instead of proprietary sound formats.

You'll find numerous conversion tools, and Media Player will play these just fine.

Vorbis

reply to post by OldCorp


OC take a look at this link to see if the info helps. they got a few replies as you scroll down. if no go please post, i've used some great geek sites i can check.

answers.microsoft.com...

Originally posted by LargeFries
reply to post by OldCorp

 

OC take a look at this link to see if the info helps. they got a few replies as you scroll down. if no go please post, i've used some great geek sites i can check.

answers.microsoft.com...

THANK YOU! That is exactly what I was looking for. I could have written the OP there myself. The Microsoft guy suggested starting from scratch, which as one poster pointed out, destroys any tags or other information you have added to your files. I liked this guy's response:

This is not an acceptable option, too much valuable information get lost if you delete the current database before rebuilding it. Can't Microsoft create a small utility that would scan the current database and delete all entries that don't match a physical location on the disk, rather?

I also have the same duplicate tracks problem every single time I rip a CD (over 2,000 so far), not because of a Windows 7 upgrade, but because I temporarily move the WMAs folders outside the indexed library so I can rip them to MP3s too, and then move the WMAs back to the library, and now they appear in 2 different locations. So for each album, I need to view them in the WMP library, sort by Path, and delete all the entries matching the old path. Such a pain. Every database should come with a set of utilities to perform repetitive tasks or fix bugs such as the problems coming from not being a dynamic database.

What I emboldened above was the course of action I took. I simply sorted all of the entries by their path, and deleted them all with one keystroke. GENIUS! This has been giving me so much grief, you wouldn't believe.

A burger and Coke (to go with your fries ) and a million internets for you!

reply to post by OldCorp


LOL! excellent. thrilled it worked OC