Solved Windows Explorer not showing MP3 tags

[General Gilliam]

Hi, first of all, I'm new here, so I apologize if this is in the wrong place.

Recently, my Windows Explorer started acting weird, it's not showing any of the tag information for my music. They are all tagged just fine (ID3v2.3), and all the tags show up just fine in Windows Media Player and iTunes. However, Explorer simply won't show them, so when I add them to my MP3 player they are all listed under artist (unknown).

Here's a photo of it, as you can see, the artist, album, title ect... fields are all blank (even though they are tagged).

I am using Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit BTW.



EDIT:
Alright, problem solved. To anyone who's having this problem, and all the posts online saying "oh convert to this tag, or use this program, or make sure it's not 2.4" ect..., try this:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1538-sfc-scannow-command-system-file-checker.html

1. Click start (Windows Icon)
2. Click All Programs
3. Click Accessories
4. Right Click Command Prompt
5. Run As Admin
6. type "sfc /scannow" without the " "
7. Press Enter

Just let it do it's thing, it should detect the corrupted files causing this and automatically replace them.

 

[Brink]

Hello Gilliam, and welcome to Seven Forums.

Looking at the details pane for the selected file in your screenshot, it doesn't appear that you have any file details (tags) set for it. Tagging them using a 3rd party program like iTunes may not have the tag show in Windows Explorer. Check using the tutorial below to see if you may be able to add a tag, and see it in Windows Explorer afterwards.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/100618-file-details-properties-add-change-remove.html

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[General Gilliam]

Hi, thanks for the response. I have them all tagged with mp3tag, and they have worked fine and displayed in explorer since as long as I can remember. It's only recently (about a week ago) that explorer has stopped displaying them.

When I try to manually change the tags through explorer (right click -> properties -> details) it won't let me change anything. I click on them to change them like you're supposed to be able to do, but nothing happens. Also, I have my permissions set to full control for all users, so it's not that.

Here's a second picture, showing what the same folder from the first picture looks like in mp3tag. As you can see, all the files are fully tagged.

I've been searching the web for the last few hours, seems I'm not the only one with this problem, there's a quite a few others. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find a solution for Windows 7 anywhere.

 

[Oaken]

How bizarre- I have the opposite. Having accidentally set MP3tag as the default for opening MP3s, I now have cover art thumbnails and tag info in Explorer that I want to get rid of.

You could try setting MP3tag as the default, reboot, and then changing the default back to what you have now. However, I've found in my case that system restore doesn't want to change the behavior back for some reason. So if you try this you may not be able to change back at a later date?

Ironically, I'd love to know what you did to remove them?

 

[General Gilliam]

How bizarre- I have the opposite. Having accidentally set MP3tag as the default for opening MP3s, I now have cover art thumbnails and tag info in Explorer that I want to get rid of.

You could try setting MP3tag as the default, reboot, and then changing the default back to what you have now. However, I've found in my case that system restore doesn't want to change the behavior back for some reason. So if you try this you may not be able to change back at a later date?

Ironically, I'd love to know what you did to remove them?

well, for your problem I'd say just open them up in mp3tag, select the ones you want to erase the tags of, then right click -> tag remove. Click okay, wait for it to finish, then save.

 

[Oaken]

well, for your problem I'd say just open them up in mp3tag, select the ones you want to erase the tags of, then right click -> tag remove. Click okay, wait for it to finish, then save.

If only it would be that simple. I don't want to remove the tags from the files- only the thumbnails, etc, from Windows Explorer.

 

[General Gilliam]

Alright, problem solved. To anyone who's having this problem, and all the posts online saying "oh convert to this tag, or use this program, or make sure it's not 2.4" ect..., try this:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1538-sfc-scannow-command-system-file-checker.html

1. Click start (Windows Icon)
2. Click All Programs
3. Click Accessories
4. Right Click Command Prompt
5. Run As Admin
6. type "sfc /scannow" without the " "
7. Press Enter

Just let it do it's thing, it should detect the corrupted files causing this and automatically replace them.

 

[Brink]

That's great news Gilliam. Thank you for posting back with your solution.

 

[DirtyPaws11]

All, if you are still having this problem and you have dBpoweramp installed, make sure you have the latest version (14.2) There has been this recent bug fix:
"Bug Fix: Uninstall could leave the Windows Property details page for previously registered formats (such as mp3) inoperable"
Once I upgraded to the latest version, all my tags reappeared, yay!

 

[ParrotSlave]

DirtyPaws11 had the fix. I had the issue on Win7 and Win8. On Win8, I had been using dB 14.2 though, but an install to 14.3 on top of itself fixed the issue. On both systems I had uninstalled dB in trying to troubleshoot why cdwriter wasn't working. And, by the way, sfc did not fix the issue, nor did ◦DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Scanhealth, which I think is the equivalent in Win8 to KB947821 in Win7.
Edit: I posted the above a few days ago, and just now found the same issue occurring--all music files have been tagged, by MP3Tag, and suddenly Explorer windows of music folders are not showing anything other than the file names. I had not done anything with dBPoweramp in the interim--i.e., not installed any codecs, or updated anything--but installing 14.3 on top of itself fixed the issue immediately.

 

[Ezway]

Thank You

Alright, problem solved. To anyone who's having this problem, and all the posts online saying "oh convert to this tag, or use this program, or make sure it's not 2.4" ect..., try this:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1538-sfc-scannow-command-system-file-checker.html

1. Click start (Windows Icon)
2. Click All Programs
3. Click Accessories
4. Right Click Command Prompt
5. Run As Admin
6. type "sfc /scannow" without the " "
7. Press Enter

Just let it do it's thing, it should detect the corrupted files causing this and automatically replace them.

Thank you so much for posting this! I just discovered this very same problem on my own computer and started freaking out. I tried sfc /scannow and it worked like a charm. Here I thought I was going to have to reorganize all of my music again. It is a very weird thing to happen though. I wonder what caused the problem in the first place though...

 

[PeaceGuard]

Unfortunately this solution doesn't work for everyone.

I'm having an exactly the same problem. I know I have a Windows 10 operating system, but I know it's not very relevant for this case and this thread exactly fits the problem.

I tried the sfc /scannow solution in cmd, but it only says "Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them" and nothing changes. I attach the screenshot.

Can you please help me with this?

 

[Hashim]

I'm having an exactly the same problem. I know I have a Windows 10 operating system, but I know it's not very relevant for this case and this thread exactly fits the problem.

I tried the sfc /scannow solution in cmd, but it only says "Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them" and nothing changes. I attach the screenshot.

Can you please help me with this?

Hey, mate, I know it's been a few months so I'm not sure whether you've managed to resolve the issue since, but I've just had the same problem with my own PC over the last few days and managed to fix it. Do you/did you have a program called dBpoweramp installed on your computer? This was the problem for me, and I managed to figure it out thanks to the earlier posts in this thread. The problem seems to be that the program makes registry changes to the metadata, and when uninstalled, doesn't restore Windows Explorer's default metadata. The first time I uninstalled the program I did so with a power installer (IOBit Uninstaller), which I think may have contributed to the problem.

To fix the issue, I first ran sfc /scannow from the command prompt. I then re-installed the latest version of the program from the website (it will be a trial version) using largely the same configuration as I did the first time I installed it. I then uninstalled it again, but this time using Windows' default uninstaller rather than IOBit. Note that you'll need to install two different programs. By this point, Windows Explorer should be displaying metadata as normal.

 

[PeaceGuard]

Hey Hashim.

Thanks for your reply. My problem is still present.
Unfortunately I don't have such a program installed and I never had. And the problem is present since a fresh Windows install, when none of the additional programs were installed.
So unfortunately your advice doesn't solve it for me.

But thanks anyway.

 

[josephkarthic]

Im sorry for replying to this very old thread but I actually found a perfect solution to this issue which really WORKS....

You need to actually install a small plugin called Audioshell

ID3 tag editor - AudioShell freeware music files tag editor - direct tag editing from Windows Vista/7/8 Explorer

Its a small software which perfectly works after installing and rebooting...It doesnt run in the background or anything..

This is the only solution which works after trying everything on the internet...Give it a try if you still face the issue...

 

[josephkarthic]

There is another easy registry fix for this issue without installing additional plugins..windows has the built in ability to show the mp3 tags by itself.....check the below link

Mp3 files basic tag information is not showing in windows explorer...Pls help!!!

 

[GuccizBud]

There is another easy registry fix for this issue without installing additional plugins..windows has the built in ability to show the mp3 tags by itself.....check the below link

Mp3 files basic tag information is not showing in windows explorer...Pls help!!!

^^ This.

The above link fixed both my Music and Pictures folders, allowing Length and Bit rate columns to display pertinent song info in the Music folder ( finally ) and the Dimensions column to show image width and height specs in the Pictures folder. Specifically, it was the Windows 7 ( 64-bit ) Registry script in the above link which did the trick. The link also contains a similar script for Windows 10 ( 64-bit ). Well done.