How to rebuild your Windows Media Player 12 library
So far I have been enjoying the beta of Windows 7 and the new version of Windows Media Player 12. I would consider myself a heavy user of Windows Media Player. I use it to as my default music player, sync my music to my Windows mobile device, and to stream home movies to my Xbox 360. If something is not working quite right, I would probably encounter it.
There are a few bugs, with newest version of Media Player, that I hope will be fixed in the final version. I’ve had to rebuild my media library on several occasions and Media Player does not always recognize when I have added new music or videos. One of the features I miss, from version 11, is the ability to force it to look for new content. With version 12, the library seems to refresh with a background task and there is no way to force it. Note to Microsoft: Perhaps a better implementation would be a file watcher on the library directories.
If you want to rebuild you library,
- Shutdown windows media player.
- Stop the media sharing service. Go to Start->Control Panel->All Control Panel Items->Administrative Tools->Services. Right-click on the “Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service” and select Stop.
- Navigate to “c:\Users\”your username”\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Media Player. Now delete the files named CurrentDatabase_***.wmdb and LocalMLS_*.wmdb.
- Start the media sharing service.
- Now start Windows Media Player and watch it build up your library again.