More Windows Media Player 11 Woes...

[thekma...@gmail.com]

Vista SP2.

#1. *Something* is messing with the metadata of my music collection, particularly the Year element. My collection is arranged chronologically rather than alphabetically(because of the way my brain is wired! lol), and all of a sudden I've got BEATLES tunes under 2009, 2010, etc.

#2. Ongoing: I have disabled all automatic functions of Media player. Since doing this, when I double click a a song to play it, it takes MP 30sec to one minute to open and play the song.

What's going on?

[Paul Drahn]

When was the last time you ran a registry cleanup program? Massive
amount of junk in the registry will cause really long time for programs
to begin executing and files to open.

Also, you should clean up the hard drive and run the program to make as
many files contiguous as possible.

Then see if your access improves.

Can't answer your sequencing question.

Paul

[Paul]

In the spirit of discovery, there are two tidbits here.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itpromedia/thread/360a255b-3a90-45cf-b5cc-5d4fbbc60a1f

C:\Users\%userdata%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Media Player

CurrentDatabase_360.wmdb
CurrentDatabase_371.wmdb

It doesn't say what format the database takes. I wouldn't expect you could
read the .wmdb directly.

At the end of the thread, there is a tool available, which
backs up the .wmdb.

"Metadata Backup"
http://www.dalepreston.com/Blog/2007/03/windows-media-player-metadata-backup.html

What that does, is convert .wmdb to .xml. (And maybe, vice versa)

XML files are text files. You should be able to view them in Wordpad or Notepad.
(You can temporarily change the extension to .txt, if you can't otherwise
figure out how to open them.) It's a wordy format, that humans aren't likely
to appreciate. (Even the Registry is more fun, than walking through an XML.)

What you'll be looking for in there, is whether each album has a
status of "found" or not. If the albums aren't "found", perhaps the
metadata (tracks, cover, details) are getting updated from the Internet
somehow.

In any case, review the information in the .wmdb, as an XML file
first, and see if there is anything that looks wrong to you.

I don't see any reason to postulate malware at a time like this,
when the software is likely capable of making a mess all on its own.
(I hate software which is too damn clever.)

Paul

[thekma...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, March 21, 2013 3:36:08 PM UTC-4, Paul Drahn wrote:
> On 3/21/2013 12:17 PM,

______________
Paul D:

I weekly run RegClean Pro - have for the past 2 years.

Thanks.

[thekma...@gmail.com]

____________
Paul:

Coincidentally, *something* installed the "Startnow" search default on my PC! It runs when I open my profile in Vista(you see an "opening data" dialog box), asking me if I want to restore my seach default to Startnow.