Troubleshooting

When WMP starts to misbehave, such as if the media library doesn’t get updated, or it plays the wrong media, the best thing to do is to rebuild the database. There are 2 ways to do this:

1. From the menus, you can ask WMP to “Apply media information changes” which doesn’t usually help.
2. You can delete the whole database and rebuild it from scratch.

Option 1: Apply Media Changes

This option is simple but usually doesn’t work: in the WMP window, click on Organize, Apply media information changes. Then see if things are any better.

Option 2: Rebuild the WMP Database and Library

You need administrator privileges on Windows to do this. These steps let you close WMP, make sure that it stops using the database, deleting the database, restarting WMP, and rebuilding the database.

1. Make sure WMP is closed.
2. Start Control Panel and click on System and Security, then Administrative Tools.

1. Click on Services.

1. Find the “Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service” click on it

1. Make sure the service is down by clicking on the Stop button.

1. Press the Windows Start button and type %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Media Player. File Explorer will take you to the folder

1. Delete all the files in the folder. (Don’t delete the sub-folders.)
2. Restart the WMP sharing service (see step 5)

Summary

Article Name

How to Fix Windows Media Player Problems

 

Author

André Roberge

 

Description

Fix Windows Media Player problems by rebuilding its database from scratch.It’s easy and it works.