I Think I Messed Up My Windows Media Player

[Lost In Space]

Hello, everyone. A couple of months ago, I was getting ready to go somewhere and I had my music playing on my Windows Media Player. Well, I was in a big rush and I pressed the power button to cut off my computer. However, the next time that I turned on my computer, my WMP looked like this with the down going arrows and the "Retrieving media info for an unknown album" message near the bottom of the player:

And it's been like this for a while and I really have no idea why or how to fix it. Can anyone help me with this?

 

[Ben Myers]

Try pressing the escape key.

Ben

 

[Lost In Space]

Try pressing the escape key.

Ben

So, so sorry for the late reply, but that didn't work.

 

[Lost In Space]

Also, the down-going arrows are still there. And I know that I probably need a new Windows 11 computer to replace this 9-year-old computer, but it would be better for me financially to wait it out another year unless that's not possible.

 

[Ben Myers]

Open an admin command prompt, paste or carefully type "msdt /id WindowsMediaPlayerLibraryDiagnostic" into it and press "Enter".

Ben

 

[Bighorn]

Also, the down-going arrows are still there. And I know that I probably need a new Windows 11 computer to replace this 9-year-old computer, but it would be better for me financially to wait it out another year unless that's not possible.

A note about the computer, Win10 is still supported until Oct. 14, 2025. If yours is like my ASUS Desktop from 2016 it can't run the default install of Win11. The only downside I see for the future is rumors have it that Win12 may be out about that same time. None of my computers would run WIn11 so got a new Notebook in Oct, '21 just after Win11 came out then a new Desktop in Apr. '22, they do everything my Win10 do.

Update: just saw the MSN News and information about Windows 12:

MSN

 

[Lost In Space]

Open an admin command prompt, paste or carefully type "msdt /id WindowsMediaPlayerLibraryDiagnostic" into it and press "Enter".

Ben

I think that I may have tried this before. And it seemed to reset my entire WMP where it even changed the way that I ripped CD from losseless to MP3 and I didn't even notice at first. So, I had to go back and re-rip some CDs into losselss format. However, that still didn't take away the down-moving arrows.

Also, when it says "You might need to create any tags you have added," are they talking about album artwork that you had to copy from the internet? Because if so, I remember already having to look up quite a few album cover artwork from the internet to copy and paste back into WMP, therefore, I think that I did this already.

 

[Lost In Space]

A note about the computer, Win10 is still supported until Oct. 14, 2025. If yours is like my ASUS Desktop from 2016 it can't run the default install of Win11. The only downside I see for the future is rumors have it that Win12 may be out about that same time. None of my computers would run WIn11 so got a new Notebook in Oct, '21 just after Win11 came out then a new Desktop in Apr. '22, they do everything my Win10 do.

Update: just saw the MSN News and information about Windows 12:

MSN

Right. Mine is a Dell and it won't run the default install of Windows 11 either. Also, I didn't know that Windows 12 was already in development so soon. But it reminds me of when they came out with Window 8 (which my computer originally was) and then shortly after that they upgraded to Windows 10 and gave everyone whose computers could handle it a free upgrade to Windows 10.

 

[Lost In Space]

No more suggestions?

 

[Lost In Space]

I wonder if the whole Recovery/Reset this PC thing would work. However, the problem that I'm having with WMP and my music files and folders hasn't allowed me to save my music files (which have grown) for a while to my portable drive that I used to always save my music to periodically. Anyone have any thoughts or suggestions about this?

 

[Bighorn]

What is the capacity of the USB/portable drive? Has it gotten too full, no room left [right-click in File Explorer and Properties to check? I use a 1TB WD My Passport and a 750GB WD My Passport plus a couple of salvaged 1TB drives in cases I get from Amazon and most are USB 3 connections. Most of the songs/music I've Ripped from CD run 2MB to 4.5MB in size but classical are larger.

 

[Lost In Space]

What is the capacity of the USB/portable drive? Has it gotten too full, no room left [right-click in File Explorer and Properties to check? I use a 1TB WD My Passport and a 750GB WD My Passport plus a couple of salvaged 1TB drives in cases I get from Amazon and most are USB 3 connections. Most of the songs/music I've Ripped from CD run 2MB to 4.5MB in size but classical are larger.

Mine also is a 1 TB and it has 254 GB free space remaining on it.

 

[Lost In Space]

Actually, I forgot that the last time that I had transferred music to my portable drive, it did transfer the latest CD that I had purchased and ripped it to my computer, however, when transferring the files to my portabe drive, it now always stops and does something weird. But I think it's because a repairman who fixed my computer once, added an Extra Storage Drive specifically for my music files and things have been operating a bit wonky since with my music file transfers.

Also, I didn't know that my portable drive was so close to being full until now, but do you know if you eliminate some (songs) tracks from an album and/or eliminate some albums altogether, and when you transfer your music files to your portable drive after that, will your portable drive then only have the new and remaining files that you transferred to it, or will it keep the old files that you may have deleted from the files that you are transferring? If that makes sense.

 

[Bighorn]

I Rip audio CDs to my internal drive and the Music folder. They always have their own folder name that contain the songs but sometimes they will show only Track 1 and format of .cda, that's only the pointers to the actual files so useless to simply copy them. When seeing that it usually helps to be connected to the Internet, I got a new disc couple weeks ago done by a local group and it did show the songs but required being connected to get the song titles, okay at that point but failed, probably due to DRM/Digital Rights. With the song titles showing in WMP I disconnected from the Router and the Rip performed perfectly.

As for storage, I've found it best to have 20% free space on a drive, any type, gives room for working. And when frequently adding, moving or deleting it usually helps to defrag the drive, I always check for errors first. The deletion of files, going back into DOS days, only removes the first letter of the file, makes for easier recovery from the Recycle Bin but parts of the file remains on the drive, the defrag does the final deletion and gives more contiguous space for more files to be added. But that's for HDDs, haven't seen any issues with the SSDs, didn't have any until getting my Win11 computers [have 4 now, 2 were new and 2 were given me for parts and rehabbed them].

 

[Lost In Space]

Also, I didn't know that my portable drive was so close to being full until now, but do you know if you eliminate some (songs) tracks from an album and/or eliminate some albums altogether, and when you transfer your music files to your portable drive after that, will your portable drive then only have the new and remaining files that you transferred to it, or will it keep the old files that you may have deleted from the files that you are transferring? If that makes sense.

I think that I answered my own question. I just deleted a lot of albums that I never really listened to and my Extra Storage Drive only has 224 GB of free space out of a total of 465 GB. (And probably not that much more free space before I deleted those albums/music files.) Therefore, it appears that my portable drive just kept accumulating music files as I updated it and has all my music files on it since the dawn of creation.

 

[Lost In Space]

I Rip audio CDs to my internal drive and the Music folder. They always have their own folder name that contain the songs but sometimes they will show only Track 1 and format of .cda, that's only the pointers to the actual files so useless to simply copy them.

Would that be equivalent to ripping a CD to Windows Media Player? Because I know that when I do that, that the CD content gets recorded on my computer's hard drive in the Music folder. Although on my computer, it's to my Extra Storage Drive partition. (If I am saying that correctly.

 

[Bighorn]

Right, the default storage of music is the User's Music folder but WMP allows for changing that.

And Yes, one can delete anything on a drive whether portable or internal, just that Windows will not allow deleting its files in C:\Windows, won't allow killing itself. Same for Windows-based programs, can't simply be cleanly deleted so have use the Uninstall process.

 

[Lost In Space]

Right, the default storage of music is the User's Music folder but WMP allows for changing that.

And Yes, one can delete anything on a drive whether portable or internal, just that Windows will not allow deleting its files in C:\Windows, won't allow killing itself. Same for Windows-based programs, can't simply be cleanly deleted so have use the Uninstall process.

I just looked inside my portable drive and it has a music folder from when I used to update and store the content of my computer's music files into it. And then it also has an Extra Storage folder, which also is full of music files. Therefore, this accounts for why my portable drive is so full. Therefore, I deleted my Music folder and deleted a lot of old stuff that I had forgot about and don't even use or care about anymore, and now my portable storage drive has 705 GB of free space.

However, I may still have a problem of storing my music files to my portable drive. Plus, I just looked and actually, it didn't have the new album (at the time) that I had mentioned before. Therefore, I'm wondering if it would be a good practice of transferring my current music files to perhaps a newly named folder in my portable drive and then deleting the former music folder (the Extra Storage folder) that had my music files in it?

 

[Bighorn]

Therefore, I'm wondering if it would be a good practice of transferring my current music files to perhaps a newly named folder in my portable drive and then deleting the former music folder that had my music files in it?

Shouldn't be a problem doing that but if wanting to save files in the former folder, transfer to the new folder or a different drive before deleting the former folder.

 

[Lost In Space]

Shouldn't be a problem doing that but if wanting to save files in the former folder, transfer to the new folder or a different drive before deleting the former folder.

I just went ahead and deleted the contents of that folder because if I had kept the files, then they would haven just been doubled and I would have had a messed. But the music files in my portable drive are now up to date. However, I still have the problem where I have an entire second Music folder under This PC under Libraries. And then under that Music folder, it has a D:\ folder full of music files, which I think is the Extra Storage drive because it is designated as D. Therefore, it's a bit of a mess.