Reindexing Media Center Library
So after building my new file server (yes, I know I’ve been promising you a blog entry on that), I had to remap my Vista Media Center to look for videos in a different location. However, for some reason, deleting existing “watched folders” was problematic for Media Center. It would leave random folders inside “My Videos” and other areas, which was annoying. I had unlinked my music share because I didn’t really listen to music on my media center, but none of the music would disappear from “My Music”.
When I open “My Videos”, I would see Local Disk (C:) and \\KrunkFS\Public because I used to have C:\Public\Unwatched and \\KrunkFS\Public\Music linked.
I tried searching the web, but I’ve found people hitting this problem, but never a solution. However, I have on advantage that others don’t, I work at Microsoft. Sending a email to the Media Center team was a simple as locating what their distribution list alias is.
My email:
I was wondering if there’s a way to reset the Windows Vista Media Center library. This past weekend, I moved some folders around and removed it from the watched folders list. However, remnants of the previously watched folders still exist. What’s funkier is that now Local Disk (C:) is being shown in “My Videos” when C:\Public\Videos was removed from my library setup.
Another example would be the music I was storing in \\server\Public\Music which was mapped to Z:\. Removing that folder from the watch list now brings up a \\server\Public in “My Videos”.
I tried rebooting or leaving Media Center on for a couple hours hoping it’ll clear the cache, but that didn’t work.
I wasn’t able to find anything remotely sounding to what I wanted in the settings/tasks area.
I was wondering if there’s something I’m missing or if there’s another way to force it to reset or completely reindex the library.
Thanks in advance.
It turns out that Media Center and WMP11 (Windows Media Player) share the same library and if I had searched for how to fix library problems in WMP11, I would’ve found the solution.
Someone pointed me to this KB article: You cannot view, add, or delete items in the library in Windows Media Player 11, which gives directions on how to reset the library. It mentions that the library has entered a corrupted state and you’ll probably have to delete the entire library.
I had no problem with doing that as I just wanted to reset the library completely and do a re-index.
The instructions are:
- Exit Windows Media Player.
- For Windows XP:
Click Start, click Run, type %userprofile%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Media Player, and then click OK.
For Windows Vista:
Click Start, click Run, type %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Media Player, and then click OK. - Select all the files in the folder, and then click Delete on the File menu.
Note You do not have to delete the folders that are in this folder. - Restart Windows Media Player.
Note Windows Media Player automatically rebuilds the database.
After deleting all the files, Media Center’s library was completely reset. I readded the folders I wanted and everything has worked fine since.
September 16th, 2007 at 8:33 am
Or had you gone into WMP11 you could actually remove items from the library. MC allows you to add items to the watch list, and remove them from the watch list (so it’ll stop scanning them), but anything it already saw it continues to see.
September 16th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
I had gone into WMP11, but I wasn’t able to find a way remove folders. Basically, after I removed “C:\Public\Unwatched” and “\\KrunkFS\Public\Videos”, 2 new folders were introduced into my index: “Local Disk (C:)” and “\\KrunkFS\Public” and I wasn’t able to remove them at all.
I understood that I could remove the music items like you said, but even after that, the folders didn’t go away.
March 17th, 2008 at 4:12 am
So perhaps you can e-mail them again and ask how you can reset ALL settings for Vista MCE? I’ve got a small computer connected to my TV that I use to watch .avi videos. It used to play perfectly but then I got the (genius) idea to also set up the tv tuner card. Ever since then we can’t even watch .avi videos because they stutter too badly.
I also set up a tv tuner card on my laptop in Vista MCE (including the guide) and ever since the the laptop has been acting odd. I’d like a way to nuke all the settings in MCE completely but can’t find any method to do it.
April 11th, 2008 at 2:03 am
Its is doing the reindexing after deleteting the files as I type this.
The different directories with albums show up in the window. The one thing I don’t understand is the mess of the pictures. I have spent many hours adding the right cover inside all of my MP3’s and also have a folder.jpg with the cover in each album’s directory. And in the window I see 60% of the albums images with a totally wrong cover. Any idea?
April 18th, 2008 at 9:40 am
Thanks so much for your help. I ended up with duplicate entries for every song in the library, and this allowed me to clear that right up.
Thanks!
April 21st, 2008 at 11:30 pm
[...] Reindexing Media Center Library [...]
May 4th, 2008 at 7:59 am
Thank you for this. I was tearing my hair out after I spent 5 hours cleaning up my music folders only to find out that VMC was still showing the old cache.
May 11th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
[...] Reindexing Media Center Library [...]
July 30th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
I am dying here. I have tried everything I can think of to DELETE the Windows Media Center Library. It is full of duplicate DVD titles. I have deleted the entire directory under C:\Users\G1\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Media Player but WMC just rebuilds it, and the duplicates are still there. I can’t use Media Player to delete the duplicates, because it does not index the ripped DVD files. If I am deleting everything under the directory above, then WHERE is it getting this library data from? I am going insane. BTW, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940161 explains why I can never delete some of the watched folders. But, as it stands now, it is not watching any folder twice. So, the duplicates must be from a time when it was. That is why I am trying to find out how to delete the library. Anyone have any ideas?
July 30th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
Are you using any external tools/plugins like MyMovies?
How about moving your DVD rips to a different folder, delete the library meta data and rescan?
July 31st, 2008 at 3:17 am
No, I have tried some of the plugins and found them to be more trouble than they are worth. The data for the DVDs was about 50% inaccurate, and I didn’t have the patience to correct all of them. I can try moving the titles, but the thing that is throwing me is that whenever I delete the library and then open media center, the titles are all immediately there. So, this is leading me to believe that there must be another file somewhere. I don’t see how it could rebuild the list instantly like that.
July 31st, 2008 at 3:51 am
Well, that could be the case, but I wouldn’t know where it would be.
Moving the files to a different directory would force it to hopefully delete the old stale entries since it no longer exists.
September 8th, 2008 at 8:35 am
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October 10th, 2008 at 6:41 am
Finally a blog that describes the same problem I have. In my case D:\ is showing up in VMC under Picture Library and Video Library. I followed the steps as outlined above, but unfortuantely for some reason I cannot delete the following file: CurrentDatabase_360.wmdb This file is approx 70mb and I noticed this file gets updated everytime you close VMC. Anyone any ideas why I cannot delete it and complete all the steps above. Thanks.
October 10th, 2008 at 7:47 am
Just figured that some other windows media player applications are still running in the background, such as wmp network sharing. Did end the process in task manager. The steps above worked afterwards, could delete the CurrentDatabase file. Awesome! Crunk4Ever!
October 30th, 2008 at 5:57 am
I have found this ‘fix’ before and tried it quite a few times but while it refreshes the index it still does not find and index all of the music files. Sometimes it leaves out whole albums other times it just leaves songs out of an album, picking up some and not others.
ANy hints would be appreciated as it is painful going direct to the folders to find songs to play because media player will not pick them up
October 30th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
RE: Gordon
Are you hitting this issue with both Media Center and Windows Media Player?