WMP12 library deletes files on its own?

I've been using Windows 7 for about a month now, and I initially enjoyed WMP until I started having this problem. It first occurred after I'd been using for a week or two. Songs I had just added (through the player watching my "My Music" folder) would seem to disappear at random. Not from my hard drive altogether, just the library. Usually, it was some or most of an album I'd just added, but never the entire thing. The first few times this happened, I had to re-ad the music by going to Tools > Advanced > Restore deleted library items. That worked, but unfortunately, any files had lost their formatting I had changed (i.e. capitalization, names, etc.). It was just as though I had added 2 tracks yesterday, and then the other 10 later today.

Then I started to notice that this seemed to happen most when I was editing some aspect of a song. Whether I was using the "Find Album Info" feature, or changing the album title so it was more consistent with all the other data, or even changing the year of an album from Unknown to 2009, it would wind up removing some of the items. I initially thought it may have to do with that I had it set to rename files to be consistent with the rip music settings (i.e. change "01-rick-astley-never-gonna-give-you-up.mp3" to "01 Never Gonna Give You Up.mp3," but two things make me wonder if this is it at all: 1) it wouldn't remove every file, just most of them, and 2) it even happened when I wasn't editing anything to do with the file's name (i.e. year). I even had it once remove a song I was in the middle of listening to.

Anyone have any idea why it's doing this to me? Corrupt library (which, incidentally, I had that problem on my old computer with XP MCE and WMP11, although there it ceased to add any music, despite numerous attempts to start over). Maybe WMP12 has become sentient, and just doesn't like certain songs?

Mine is doing something similar to video files. In fact I can't see any of them in WMP. I tried re-adding the folder to the library and they showed up briefly and then disappeared when I looked again. My music and pic folder seems OK though. I tried asking this question weeks ago with no responses. Good luck.

BTW, I can view the videos with WMP if I play them from explorer, they just don't show up in the library

Watch out for those video files. If they're anything besides .avi or .wmv they should appear in "Other media", not Videos.
As for removing items, I never heard experienced something like that happening... ever!

They are probably there .. but maybe listed as 'Unknown Artist'?

Sopolias Falst said:

Watch out for those video files. If they're anything besides .avi or .wmv they should appear in "Other media", not Videos.
As for removing items, I never heard experienced something like that happening... ever!

Click to expand...

They are mostly wmv and avi and are not in other media. Not really a big deal for me, just a bit annoying

Pikey said:

They are probably there .. but maybe listed as 'Unknown Artist'?

Click to expand...

I hadn't thought of that, but I don't think that's it for a couple of reasons. First, I have the music sorted by date, so it's pretty easy to see whether an artist was moved up or down on the list (i.e. "30 Seconds to Mars" moves down on the list alphabetically if you rename them to "Thirty Seconds to Mars") or renamed altogether. Second, when I use Tools > Advanced > Restore deleted library items, it adds the items back in, complete with the artist, album, etc. all filled in correctly.

On a side note, I haven't used "Find album info" recently, and I just double-checked using the Restore Deleted Library Items feature, and nothing had to be re-added (either that, or that's acting up, too!). So I suppose it's possible my problems are tied to my use of Find Album Info, and if I just stick to editing the tags within Windows Explorer rather than inside WMP, that might solve this problem. A real big time-wasting pain in my arse, but a solution nonetheless. Maybe MS should fix WMP, if not at any point by updating WMP12, then on WMP13, such that you can edit tags inside the library just like you used to be able to. I don't see why they removed it in the first place.