Windows 7 - WMP12 won't sort

Earlier today when I booted up my computer and started up Windows Media Player, I noticed that I had lost the ability to sort by columns in the media library. So, whereas I normally like to sort by artist or date added, the list now appears essentially in the alphabetical order the folders are organized in the corresponding Music folder.

I can't think of a single thing that I could have possibly done that would have caused it to happen. I was using it fine, without any problems yesterday. Loaded some Ramones into it, and it worked fine thereafter. Shut it off overnight, turn it on again this morning, and it's effed up. Tried closing down WMP and restarting it, and rebooting my 'puter as well, to no avail. Couldn't find anything in the Options > Library tab that says "Check here if you don't want to have as much control over your media library." Any ideas from anyone else out there?

Thanks in advance!

Reset WMP settings? Open Start and paste "msdt -ep tscontrolpanel -path c:\windows\diagnostics\index\windowsmediaplayerconfiguration.xml"

What does that do?

Nothing.

More accurately, while it did appear to reset WMP's settings, it had no impact on my ability to sort by particular columns in either the Expanded Tile or Details views.

I keep holding out hope that one of these times, after turn my computer on after it's been off overnight or whatever that it'll just miraculously work.

I should also note, by entering anything (even a space) in the Search box allows me to sort the columns as I wish. So, I guess that's an adequate enough fix, if there's no other way. I'm just confused as to how this happened. Unless I reached some magical maximum number of items in the library.

So I went to add more music today, utilizing the sort function by putting a space in the Search box, and that seemed to be working, until I cleared the Search box. Everything went back to the mundane, unsortable order. I entered the space again, and it appeared as though I had added nothing. I guess next step is to reset and rebuilt the library or whatever? Bummer.

if i remember there is a view option button to the left of the search box, or right click, music, video, pictures etc and select customize navigation pane.. i dunno if either of these would help with your problem but could be worth a try

So I completely reinstalled Windows 7, and am still having the same problem... what makes it worse is I've tried Winamp and iTunes since, and while people rave about that, I can't say I'm a fan of either. iTunes was looking promising until I realized it wouldn't automatically add files to the library the way WMP does. I guess I'll just have to make do for now and wait until WMP13 comes out whenever...

I am wondering if you are still having this problem. I have the same problem on Windows 7 Ult. x64. If you are still having it, how many songs do you have in your library? I have 130k+, and I am trying to figure out if that is the problem.

I'm thinking that's what the problem is. I went over 120k a few months ago, and that was when this first started happening. I guess if I were to start emailing Microsoft to fix this, they'd look in to it for other reasons.