Weird Windows Media Player 11 problem

[Lazarus]

Ever since I got Windows 7 back on release WMP hasn't worked right. Every time I load it takes about a minute to respond, then 3 or so minutes 'updating media library' where it's laggy as fuck, then starts 'downloading album art' or 'updating unknown album' or some shit over and over again. It does this every time no matter how long I leave it to sort itself out. Any ideas?

[Teleros]

Checked the Tools\Options\ Player & Library settings? Not sure I can be much more help as I'm running XP & Vista on my machines, but that'd be the best place to start.

[Stark]

Do you have a media library, or is it just freaking out?

[Lazarus]

Yeah I get the library up after maybe 30 seconds, but it's been running for 2 hours now and is still 'updating media library C:/', which i presume is whats causing it to be as laggy as it is. And I've turned off the 'internet update option' which has got rid of some of the messages but not the problem.

[Stark]

I'm pretty sure WMP likes to find your media for you (at least the Zune player does) so you should be able to find an option to turn this off, if it's trolling your hard drive for media files.

[Genii Lodus]

If you open an Explorer window and click Libraries->Music there should be a blurb under the top that says "includes X locations". Click that link and it should open a dialog which tells you which folders Windows considers to be part of the library. Libraries are meant to aggregate files of certain types, WMP11 on Windows 7 uses the contents of the music library to tell it what music you have. In theory this means there isn't any catalogue/index file which could be corrupted/lost. Perhaps your music library has had C:\ added to it somehow? Alternatively you could try telling WMP11 not to download album art by Organize->Options->Library and untick Retrieve media information from the internet.

[Stark]

Yeah, at least under Zune there are locations you can't remove, but you can turn off the 'watching' aspect. Extraordinarily annoying process, but a result of retards complaining that drag and drop is better than iTunes.