WMC freezing when entering Music

[ipguy]

Hi

Has anyone experienced WMC freezing for 2 - 3 minutes when entering music?

[STC]

What shares have you setup?

[ipguy]

The music is on a locally installed HDD, D:
I've just mapped Z: for my movies

[DavidinCT]

Hi

Has anyone experienced WMC freezing for 2 - 3 minutes when entering music?

Just wondering, how much music do you have ? I have seen this where when loading music it checks for art and new content, it hangs a little but, I have only about 20-25gb of music. I can see if you have a really large collection, it could hang for a time.

When you first load Music or Movies on WMC, it will check for new art and Meta data from the Internet, if you have a really slow connection or a REALLY large library, this can cause WMC to hang for a short time depending on the size(CPU and HD speed can affect this a little too). You might see all Images "flash" before it's ready to use (go to blank labels and then all the music art).

If your Art and meta data is all set, try this. Settings>General>Automatic Download Options> Disable "Retrieve CD Album art, Media information for DVDs and movies, and Internet Services from the Internet.".

Restart Media Center and try again, Let me know if it resolves this issue.

[ipguy]

Hi

Has anyone experienced WMC freezing for 2 - 3 minutes when entering music?

Just wondering, how much music do you have ? I have seen this where when loading music it checks for art and new content, it hangs a little but, I have only about 20-25gb of music. I can see if you have a really large collection, it could hang for a time.

When you first load Music or Movies on WMC, it will check for new art and Meta data from the Internet, if you have a really slow connection or a REALLY large library, this can cause WMC to hang for a short time depending on the size(CPU and HD speed can affect this a little too). You might see all Images "flash" before it's ready to use (go to blank labels and then all the music art).

If your Art and meta data is all set, try this. Settings>General>Automatic Download Options> Disable "Retrieve CD Album art, Media information for DVDs and movies, and Internet Services from the Internet.".

Restart Media Center and try again, Let me know if it resolves this issue.

Its strange to be honest, we only have 100 CDs ripped from originals that we have had for years and never experienced the freezing issue.

I recently rebuilt MCE and used MCE reset toolbox to remove some menu like sport, picture and videos... It might be that, not sure.

[DavidinCT]

Hi

Has anyone experienced WMC freezing for 2 - 3 minutes when entering music?

Just wondering, how much music do you have ? I have seen this where when loading music it checks for art and new content, it hangs a little but, I have only about 20-25gb of music. I can see if you have a really large collection, it could hang for a time.

When you first load Music or Movies on WMC, it will check for new art and Meta data from the Internet, if you have a really slow connection or a REALLY large library, this can cause WMC to hang for a short time depending on the size(CPU and HD speed can affect this a little too). You might see all Images "flash" before it's ready to use (go to blank labels and then all the music art).

If your Art and meta data is all set, try this. Settings>General>Automatic Download Options> Disable "Retrieve CD Album art, Media information for DVDs and movies, and Internet Services from the Internet.".

Restart Media Center and try again, Let me know if it resolves this issue.

Its strange to be honest, we only have 100 CDs ripped from originals that we have had for years and never experienced the freezing issue.

I recently rebuilt MCE and used MCE reset toolbox to remove some menu like sport, picture and videos... It might be that, not sure.

Hmmm.... Not sure what that program does off the top of my head but, there is a few methods to "Nuke" WMC back to First run (What MS calls the first time you run WMC).

In case you didn't know, The Music Library in WMC is controlled by Windows MEDIA PLAYER. So, if it's really causing an issue, you can reset the music library, I would remove your music folder from Media Center, so it shows no music, then find out how to reset Windows Media Player (lots of links by a quick bing/google search), After Media Player is set back to it's defaults, run it first so it asks you the first questions, then when it opens, the library should have NOTHING in it(clean and back to defaults).

Close WMP (I might reboot here), and then open WMC and re-add your music...If the program you got reset just WMC but, didn't reset WMP, that could be part of your problem.

Try the quick thing I suggested see if that fixes it, if not I would reset WMP...I would bet it would fix your problem.

[ipguy]

After a complete windows reinstall, I added my music and its still freezing when I enter the music menu in MCE to play my music

I'm at a loss as to why its doing this.

[ipguy]

Any help would be appreciated, I'm at a loss

[Shark007]

did you install a FLAC decoder? If so, uninstall it to see if it is causing the problem.

[ipguy]

did you install a FLAC decoder? If so, uninstall it to see if it is causing the problem.

I don't have any third party codecs installed at all yet opening the music menu causes MCE to freeze for 15 to 30 seconds and increases as the number of albums increase.

Is anyone else experiencing or have they experienced this in the past ?

[ipguy]

I'm at a loss to explain whats going on

Nothing in event viewer to suggest errors.

[ipguy]

The solution was to disable "retrieve CD art, media information for DVDs and movies, and internet services from the internet" under Automatic Download Options, in Windows Media Centre

If you disable this in Windows Media Player, it does not fix the freezing problem, you MUST do it in MCE

[shadowman46]

The solution was to disable "retrieve CD art, media information for DVDs and movies, and internet services from the internet" under Automatic Download Options, in Windows Media Centre

If you disable this in Windows Media Player, it does not fix the freezing problem, you MUST do it in MCE

Thank you so much-- this immediately fixed my problem.

Key point: In WMC, under "Settings/General"-- disable automatic downloads for CD art, etc.
Doing this in "Windows Media Player" alone is not sufficient.

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Keywords: Windows Media Center WMC music library hangs freezes