I have a fairly large library (local drive) which has many FLAC files in it. It takes quite a while for the items to be added to the library. I can play the files, etc however after a certain point adding files, it crashes. Thereafter everytime I restart WMP, It will keep adding files for several minutes then crash again. I then delete the library through Windows Media Player Library troubleshooter or other means. After it runs for a while again it seems to get to a certain point and same thing all over again. Does anyone have a large library w/ FLAC running successfully in these versions of 10? I'm wondering if it's my computer or not. I have a mirror image of the music on a WD Cloud HD, use that instead of local, but same thing happens. BTW On previous versions of Windows (8.1 and back), I used WMP Tag Plus and different FLAC decoders and although it would crash a couple times initially when building the library, it would eventually complete and work. I also used the old version - WMP Tag Support Extender - on an earlier pre-FLAC supported version of 10 preview (the new WMP Tag Plus versions wouldn't work at all), however I can't remember if it kept crashing.
I have had that probelm before on older version of WMP. It could be a few files that WMP don't like. One way to track it down, is to not add all the files at once. That is have WMP monitor a folder and then copy a group of albums at a time to it. Then when it crashes remover those last groop and continue. From the bad group you can add small groups to find the bad files.
WMP has to be updated for ages and it wasn't designed to handle such big libraries. I don't even know why (like you) I insist to use it. I was hoping that they would finally update it, but nothing signs that it will happen. They have put all their money on that atrocious Xbox Music app. I don't even care if they fire the whole IE team and never release Spartan, the only Microsoft application I am currently attached to is sadly WMP. Try like me to send feedback through theFeedback app, but don't get your hopes up... They only listen to s**tty mainstream requests of little use which are easy to implement...
Thanks for the feed back on the crashing problem Rainey, I'll try the suggestion. I just wanted to make sure it's not a common problem first. TiBon, as for WMP in general - WMP for me just works better with large libraries (when it does), and has better functionality than all the other players. Now that native FLAC is supported and I don't have to install 3rd party codecs/tag readers it will be even better. The only other one media player I've came across that comes close, and surpasses it in several important ways is MediaMonkey Pro. I listen to my library through WMP. When I hear I song I like a lot I add that to my "Droid" playlist - a playlist of songs I want on my droid phone. WMP can't sync FLAC files (without expensive apps) and doesn't have many conversion settings (convert to 320Kb, etc). This is where MediaMonkey comes in. I use MM to sync my songs through the Droid playlist, as well as audiobooks and videos - it will convert on the fly to whatever quality I want (ie 320Kb Extreme for music), or Videos to AVI, etc. and add them to the directories I specify. The downside is that I have to "re-import" the playlist each time I add/remove song, as MM only sees it as a static import - not a "live" playlist constantly changing like WMP does. There are always trade-offs with everything. I hate that. MM also will scan the media library quicker than WMP, and DOESN'T CRASH like WMP now does for me... Why don't I use MM exclusively then? I like playing the music (and updating playlist) through WMP because for me (although outdated) it looks better, has better sound (SRS), has mini player function, etc. I thought I heard somewhere that they are going to update WMP (or maybe it was WMC). I hope so - it needs a bit of an overhaul. It's looking dated and needs to fit in with the new Windows 10 GUI, also better syncing functionality, etc.. Now if MM would update and modernize.....
I have a very lager MP3 collection about 800GB also. I use WMP also for music play back most of the time, i like the interface. I liked it when i scanned the library and it would show all the cover art and looked nice. But i also would end up with database issues at some point because of the large library and it would hog the CPU when it started scanning for what every reason it had to do it again, i could not control it (scanning that is). So i just don't monitor any folder any more and just play my music by playlists these days. I use Tag&Rename to tag my albums and i create playlists when i tag them. So all have playlists. I use a program called "Everything search" and i can find any songs/albums i want very fast and easy. I also at times use a program called Boxeasy Jukebox (very old), it can use playlists or you can que up songs/albums as you wish.
i have over 250gb's of flacs and have had no issues but it's best to use musicbee it handles flacs much better
Yeah, this bug isn't new. It's been around since the Vista days (at least)! I used to use WMP to share all of my files across my network and the database would always consume my SSD. I think it used to get to over 50GB. Now I just use Media Browser.
Thanks for the feedback, and thanks Rainey for putting things in perspective for me. My library is rather large too (around 750GB), so I was hesitant to go through it, but did so. It was not as bad as i thought. I did it over a period of several nights. I moved the folders out of my monitored music folder and gradually moved them back alpabetically. Then came the "K" folders and .... crash. I tracked it down to one album folder, whenever I tried to open the folder in explorer it would just close down explorer rather quickly. It is an obscure Swedish folk/progressive rock band called Kebnekajse (check them out), and the album was Idioten.