Hi

 I'm having this exact problem too. I recorded a little video that shows both the issue with "Music" and "Movies" rebuilding the database. Tried disabling "connect to internet" and "maintain global start rating". But no luck for me. Maybe we shoul try to connect with Ian Dixon or Stuart Harrison to get this issue bumped at the MS headquarter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maPXujbpxIE

Thanks

HiI was experiencing the library rebuild after doing a vista to W7 upgrade so decided to do a fresh install of W7, the problem didn't go away but the rebuild was noticeably faster.  For the last few weeks I've had WMP open on system startup minimized, this appeared to clear the problem until last week when it re-occurred.  To resolve I must now do one of two things:

1. Ctrl+Alt+Del and kill 7MC, leave WMP open, then restart 7MC - all ok and can play music
2. Wait for about 10mins ZZZZzzzzzzzz - all ok and can play music

Neither of which is an ideal work-around

 

I have no extenders, no shared libraries, 7MC monitors my music drive directly (have tried a shortcut in My Music and also moving all music to My Music (neither resolved)), I have pretty much everything disabled in WMP options and have tried experimenting with the options to resolve it but nothing seems to work.

 

Has anyone had any luck resolving this issue yet?

 ThanksBen

HiI was experiencing the library rebuild after doing a vista to W7 upgrade so decided to do a fresh install of W7, the problem didn't go away but the rebuild was noticeably faster.  For the last few weeks I've had WMP open on system startup minimized, this appeared to clear the problem until last week when it re-occurred.  To resolve I must do now do one of two things:

1. Ctrl+Alt+Del and kill 7MC, leave WMP open, then restart 7MC - all ok and can play music
2. Wait for about 10mins ZZZZzzzzzzzz - all ok and can play music

Neither of which is an ideal work-around

 

I have no extenders, no shared libraries, 7MC monitors my music drive directly (have tried a shortcut in My Music and also moving all music to My Music (neither resolved)), I have pretty much everything disabled in WMP options and have tried experimenting with the options to resolve it but nothing seems to work.

 

Has anyone had any luck resolving this issue yet?

 ThanksBen

 I have a similar problem and have yet to figure out what circumstances force the music library to rebuild. This is one of a number of irritating glitches with MC I've encountered since I got one back in December.

ladefoged

 Hi

 I'm having this exact problem too. I recorded a little video that shows both the issue with "Music" and "Movies" rebuilding the database. Tried disabling "connect to internet" and "maintain global start rating". But no luck for me. Maybe we shoul try to connect with Ian Dixon or Stuart Harrison to get this issue bumped at the MS headquarter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maPXujbpxIE

Thanks

Thats a great vid!!  What programme(s) did you use to create it?

I can also confirm I have the same problems with both music library and movie library... albeit mine don't take that long.  Also, I rarely get the artwork back in movie library 'till I go out and come straight back into it.

I have to say I don't mind too much bugs in these things upon first release but I think this is taking it too far.  Movie library is just a joke bug-wise and I wish Microsoft would just admit and/or acknowledge these issues and then do what seems to be an ever-increasing common practice... NOTHING!!

Oh well we can but hope.

Rich

I wanted to report that I'm still having the issue with the music library re-caching. It happened a few days ago, but hasn't happened since. I really can't tell what triggers it.

I watched the video that was posted I was also having the issue with the movie library where the movie covers would re-cache. I have only about 100 movies on at a time, so it wasn't as severe. What I'd see when first entering the movie library was all my covers would show up for the folders that contained "Folder.jpg" in them, but the covers would not display for my DVD rips. Then about 2 seconds later just the opposite would happen, and the within maybe 10 seconds all the covers would turn back on.

Now that I think about it, the behavior of the music library and the movie library is very similar...it shows the placeholder for the artwork (colored box) right off the bat, but then sporadically starts displaying the cover art as it rebuilds the cache (at least that's what I think it's doing). So it's not rebuilding the database, it's just re-caching thumbnails.

I saw something even stranger last night, one a 7MC PC connected to a WHS server. The music library was freaking out again looked like it was rebuilding no covers showing etc, however the album number count in the bottom right hand corner was going down not up. I think I might log an official support call with Microsoft on this one as it's the last big problem I have with Media Center right now.

 

Hi cw-kid

Did you log an official support call with MS?  Not sure how to do this myself but if you can let me know how to add to the call number I can add my experiences too.

Thanks

Ben

I have had a couple of people email me on the same topic. it must be a bug. Stuart did you raise the issue?

 No not yet, I will log a support call soon, using one of my free Technet support incidents, as I think us talking about this issue on a forum is probably not going to get this particular issue fully resolved. 

Edit: Ok I've just emailed Microsoft Global support to raise the ticket and I have asked for it to be directed to the ehome team in Redmond, not sure if it will be, or if I'll just get some support guy who doesn't know what I'm talking about but it's worth a shot.

So I've also emailed Peter Brown our Community Lead with the URL of this thread in the hope the right guys at Redmond get to see it. 

 

 

Great - thanks Stuart

Keep us posted on any response you get - would be great to get this bug/issue resolved by MS or for them to suggest a "how-to" fix.

Ben

popcorn&butter

 Well, seems like creating a new administrator user account did the trick. Copied my files over and was good to go.

WMP found my Music share as soon as it was added and updated all my folders. There must have been something corrupted, but it was not in the user/Media Player folder that holds the data base files. 

Now I wonder what else to backup when it goes down again.

Disabling the "connect to the internet" sounds like a good way to get WMC a bit more speed.

I had a similar problem on my home machine (No WHS, files stored locally), where the albums would dissapear completely from the WMP12 library. Deleting the WMP12 database files and letting WMP rebuild the library was the only way to get them back, but then the next day or whatever the music would vanish again. I also had to create a new user account to resolve that problem. This is not the problem I am having now however on this thread but only as described in my initial post.

I've not tried jaggedaz suggestion yet of disabling "Automatically allow devices to play my media" and to also disable the "Maintain my star ratings as global ratings in files" setting, but I will do so tomorrow on a job. They have 5 Media Center PC's and a WHS and this is where I've been seeing this problem again.

 I do however always disable "Retrieve additional information from the Internet" on every HTPC I build.

What does "Maintain my star ratings as global ratings in files" actually do anyways? I assume it means the ratings for your music can be seen across multiple MCE machines?

Ian has just mentioned this problem and thread in his podcast as well.

I have my music stored on a WHS and I have always seemed to have library issues.  For instance if I 'play all' and skip forward a track it could take up 10-20 seconds, sometimes skipping forward would work just fine but skipping back would present the issue all the same.  This of course is after my library is fully populated which seemed sporadic over the course of time.

I don't know what changed...

As of late everything is working fine, the library is quite responsive and is fully populated and hasn't rebuilt itself lately, it is working as expected.  Mind you I did nothing to resolve the issue but simply left it alone.  Perhaps it's a matter of indexing over a long period of time as I have thousands of tracks (over 10,000) not to mention indexing changed versions in there somewhere.

I wanted to add that I embed the cover art in all of my MP3s versus having a Folder.jpg in each album folder. I wonder if that has anything to do with why it takes an exceptionally long time to re-cache the thumbnails. Anyone else embed their cover art? Maybe it's a commonality among those that are having the problem.

I also have all my album art embedded in the MP3s - haven't tried adding a folder.jpg but might give it go at the weekend if I get a chance.  It does appear that the re-cache of thumbnails is causing some sort of problem as while it is rebuilding the library I only get the standard coloured thumbnails that are displayed when an image is not availbable.

Ben