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WMP11 Will Not Add all Music to Library

2K views 5 replies 3 participants last post by  Hughv 
#1 ·
This is driving me insane.

I am running WMP11 on Windows XP Home with 1Gb of memory and an immense amount of free space on my hard drive, in case that matters.

Originally all my music was displayed in the library with all the album art etc. However I had to re-install Windows and ever since then I have never been able to get WMP11 to add all the music to the library that was, after all, there before. It adds some folder but not others yet they had all been added before my re-install.

I have tried the uninstal of WMP11, Windows Media Format 11 Runtime and Microsoft User-Mode Driver Frameworks Feature Pack 1.0 and deleted all Media Player Folders etc, re-installed WMP11 and it STILL will not add the files as it did originally.

If I add the folders individually it will add the mp3 files to the library but I have hundreds of folders and adding them individually would take forever.

I have also followed all the suggestions for rebuilding the database again without success.

Does anyone know what I need to do to get WMP11 to once again add ALL my music to the library??
 
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#2 ·
First I turn off Monitor Folders. On the Monitor Folders screen set it to "My personal folders" and set all the folders to "Ignore". The Rip folder can't be set to "Ignore" so I change that to an empty folder that I never use.

To add the files, keep all of your music in one main folder with a bunch of sub-folders. Then use Windows Explorer to drag-and-drop the main folder into the WMP library window.
 
#3 ·
Thank you for your reply and I tried exactly as you stated but it did not work. All that happened was a box opened up which stated "Working" but nothing happened.

I am not sure how it could work because, correct me if I am wrong, but all the track names that appear in the WMP11 library are shortcuts to the music tracks which are elsewhere on the hard disk. By doing what you suggested seems to be an attempte to copy all the music files into WMP11 which cannot happen as it is merely a database.

I do not understand how the library is not now reading folders that it had read in the past and if I add the folders one by one to the monitoring list they are then read and appear in the library!?
 
#4 ·
The method I gave you and using monitor folders are just two different ways of doing the same thing, adding music files to the WMP database. If I were you I wouldn't bother trying to get WMP player to work, it's just not a very good music database.

Try MediaMonkey instead, especially if you have a large collection.
 
#5 ·
Thanks for the responses but I've found the problem.

For some reason and somehow, the System attribute had been changed on about 50% of my files so WMP11 could not read them. Research on the web lead me to this solution which worked instantly:

"To find out if a directory entry has the System attribute set, you have to open the Command Prompt. Then navigate to Music folder, which is usually under your profile as "My Music"

cd /d "%USERPROFILE%\My Documents\My Music\"

Then get a listing of the directories that have the System attribute set:

dir /ads /s

This lists directories only that have the System attribute set. Then use the ATTRIB command to reset the System attribute:

attrib -s *.* /d /s

This will turn off the System attribute on all files and directories. A number of files that are hidden will generate errors, but that can be ignored."

As soon as I did this all my music files reappeared in the WMP11 Library :D
 
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