Windows 7: WMP 7 cannot find files from ext. hard drive

I am not very computer savvy, but I think this problem should not be happening. I have quite a bit of music stored on an external hard drive (hdd). I usually go into 'my computer'- my book (f) and then the folder (cd) and click on 'play all', and the computer by default plays the music and stores a link to each file in WMP 7. Everything was working fine, I could simply go to WMP, click on the song or album and it would play, until recently WMP 7 was unable to find several of the songs/albums. The message said 'WMP can't find the file: the link to the media file might be broken'. Can anyone help to fix this problem?

thanks

Hi and welcome to the Forum.
Click the Start Button (The Orb icon) Click "Computer" and check if your External Hard drive is recognised. If you can see it then check the Drive letter it now has. I'm guessing that it will be different to when it was connected to another PC. This is why I advocate giving external hard drives designated drive letters way up the alphabet to the X, Y and Z area.
It would also help us to help you if you completed your system specs!

I think you're confusing your Media Player version with your Windows version. Media Player is up to version 12 now, though you may still have 11 (I think that's what it came with).

Nonetheless, you may indeed have a different drive letter assigned from what you had originally. It is best to manually assign drive letters especially to drives that may be "on and off" the computer.

Is there room to put your music on your hard drive and just use the external as a backup device ??

Just a thought.

The external hard drive letter is "F", which is in order with the lettering of the other drives on the computer (local disc is 'C', recovery is 'd', dvd/cd is 'E'...). Yes, I'm pretty sure the version of WMP I have is 12, I did mean that I have windows 7. I will manually change the letter and see if that helps. I would prefer not to have to put the music on the computer because there is so much of it (75 GB) . I have about 185 GB free space on my computer, which is plenty, but would it slow it down? Also, it would take forever to transfer it in the way that I know how to do it.

Don't want to start another thread here but I would personally advocate keeping your considerable music collection on the external drive. If you want to back it up the another external hard drive would be my preferred option. I still think that all external hard drives should have dedicated drive letters near the top end of the alphabet as this safeguards the links when you add a card reader of similar. Leaving Windows to designate the drive letter is not the best idea in these circumstances, IMHO that is, of course!