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Media Player corrupting files synced to a MP3 player

O

ourponds

Flightless Bird
We have 2 PCs, Vista HP with Media Player 11, and Windows 7 HP with MP 12,
and 3 brand new MP3 players ( 2x 8Gb and 1x 16Gb ) When we put about 20
albums onto an MP3 player, its usually OK, the problems start when we try to
add more!The MP3 player usually becomes corrupt and will not play in the cars
( We have both got new cars with USB inputs, hence the need for the MP3's ).
What mostly happens is that the last added items have the correct artist
name, but when the album is opened, they have the playlist of an album of
another artist in the list.
We do not use the players for video etc. only MP3. Both PCs have plenty of
memory ( 2 & 4 Gb resp) and plenty of hard drive space and they are
regularly swept for viruses and malware.
We have been having this battle for over 4weeks now, and if we werent
retired, would probably given up! But somebody must be able to suggest a
solution.
 
A

Andrew E.

Flightless Bird
Try putting fewer albums on at first,then try adding,see if that clears
up that problem.Also,in WMP,go to tools,options,edit the tabs,they may
have the wrong settings (chk hardware tab & the hardware properties).
You can/could also download & run WMDiag,its from microsoft,it runs
some tests on WMP.

"ourponds" wrote:

> We have 2 PCs, Vista HP with Media Player 11, and Windows 7 HP with MP 12,
> and 3 brand new MP3 players ( 2x 8Gb and 1x 16Gb ) When we put about 20
> albums onto an MP3 player, its usually OK, the problems start when we try to
> add more!The MP3 player usually becomes corrupt and will not play in the cars
> ( We have both got new cars with USB inputs, hence the need for the MP3's ).
> What mostly happens is that the last added items have the correct artist
> name, but when the album is opened, they have the playlist of an album of
> another artist in the list.
> We do not use the players for video etc. only MP3. Both PCs have plenty of
> memory ( 2 & 4 Gb resp) and plenty of hard drive space and they are
> regularly swept for viruses and malware.
> We have been having this battle for over 4weeks now, and if we werent
> retired, would probably given up! But somebody must be able to suggest a
> solution.
 
N

Neil Smith [MVP Digital Media]

Flightless Bird
On Mon, 22 Feb 2010 13:17:01 -0800, ourponds
<ourponds@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:

>
>We have 2 PCs, Vista HP with Media Player 11, and Windows 7 HP with MP 12,
>and 3 brand new MP3 players ( 2x 8Gb and 1x 16Gb ) When we put about 20
>albums onto an MP3 player, its usually OK, the problems start when we try to
>add more!The MP3 player usually becomes corrupt and will not play in the cars
>( We have both got new cars with USB inputs, hence the need for the MP3's ).
>What mostly happens is that the last added items have the correct artist
>name, but when the album is opened, they have the playlist of an album of
>another artist in the list.
>We do not use the players for video etc. only MP3. Both PCs have plenty of
>memory ( 2 & 4 Gb resp) and plenty of hard drive space and they are
>regularly swept for viruses and malware.
>We have been having this battle for over 4weeks now, and if we werent
>retired, would probably given up! But somebody must be able to suggest a
>solution.



It's worth considering, for a while, just Sync the content using a
single PC, either just the WIn7 or just the Vista machine, to try to
isolate the issue a bit.

I haven't (personally) tested the scenario well where I fill an MP3
player from one OS or player version then the other, to see if it
remains stable...

Also have a quick try by resetting the 'transcoded files cache' on
each media player : Head to Tools -> Options / More Options, then the
Devices tab, and click 'Advanced...'

There are 2 buttons there (Change.. and Delete Files)
You need to hit the Delete Files button once to clear the cache

Transcoded files cache is basically storage for when the player first
converts a track to a fomat which the MP3 player can read - in your
case possibly from WMA audio to MP3 audio. It does this step once to
avoid the overhead of repeatedly converting files that it's done
previously.

If for some reason one or more files became corrupt during this
process, it's possible I guess that they can be cached as broken, then
transferred to the MP3 player rather than re-converted

The likelihood is somewhere in the 20 or so albums, one or two tracks
turn up which have become damaged somehow, rather than it being a
fixed size issue.

One *possible* size issue might result if the transcoded files cache
is completely full for some reason - you'll see 'amount of disk space
to use' which is typically 10% of the hard disk. If the disk (C drive
in most cases) is nearly full, I could see that perhaps being an issue



They're the 2 best shots I can think of to try to solve this.

Out of interest, what error message do you see when the "MP3 player
becomes corrupt" - is it an error in media player itself, or an error
shown on the MP3 device display ?

HTH
Cheers - Neil
------------------------------------------------
Digital Media MVP : 2004-2010
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/mvpfaqs
 
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