Re: WMP 11 'Recently Added' function...

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very interesting.

does anyone know of a website that lists known bugs with windows and its many nooks and crannies?

it would be nice if us peasants could report real, (i.e. testable or common) problems to somewhere in the vain knowledge that microsoft employees may visit that site and see what problems are being had. maybe with a list of the top 50 current bugs. (is this wishful thinking?) that way no one has to pay $59 dolla just to say something is seriously broken. (obviously there are many problems associated with such a site...)

I wonder how many people have to complain about a bug before it gets any slight recognition? I think the recently added problem is quite big. but that's my personal opinion I guess.



"Dale" <nospam@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:%23lTcifxYHHA.2552@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
This is definitely a bug.

I could quote Zach's statement about how terribly expensive a single bug fix is and how the right thing to do when a bug is identified is not always to fix it. And I could certainly point out some completely amateurish bugs so laughable that you'd think the software was written in somebody's basement that were reported in beta and still not fixed. Or I could tell you that he has often said that the only way to report a bug in Windows Media Player is to call product support.

What Zach has not said is that, if you do decide to do so, for the privilege of reporting the bug you must be prepared to spend a lot of time on the phone, and pay anywhere from 35 dollars (soon to be 59 dollars) up to several hundred dollars depending on your eligibility for support and your support needs. Of course even then you are only speaking to a call center employee who, as much as that person will want to help you, he or she will have no power to communicate your problem to the Windows Media Player product team.

Zach also never says that if you bought your copy of Windows bundled with a new PC, you are not eligible for support from Microsoft at any price. You cannot call Microsoft and report the bug. You can call Dell, HP, Gateway, or whomever you bought your hardware from and tell them about the problem. Those companies still have some limited influence at Microsoft and, if your bug ever begins to hurt their bottom line enough to drive them to do so, they do have the ability to get their partner representative at Microsoft to send an email to the Windows Media Player product team management - a group that seems to include Zach. But then, Zach already knows about the bug. So what good would that do?

All of that said, it seems there is nothing left to try except to rebuild your database. You can follow Zach's own instructions at http://www.zachd.com/pss/pss.html#medialibrary to do so.

Oh, and while you're deleting your database along with all the valuable information that you have entered or become accustomed to having, consider this quote from Zach about the value of that database and all of the valuable information you have entered and, assumedly, the value of your time in having input and created that database:

[QUOTE from Zach]
The team pays tight attention to this kind of thing. It's a fascinating
problem - dead libraries are typically non-recoverable and since they're
reflective in nature (not containing any reallly intrinsic value), there's
not much call to get them rolling again.
[ENE QUOTE from Zach]

Dale

"watercress_soup" <someone@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:e6GfrjwYHHA.4772@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
im not saying the problem is with id tags, i was just giving my experience of wmp not showing recently added files and the id tags problem with dpoweramp, until removing that program....

the last album i ripped was from the 7th march.


"Dale" <nospam@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:u2iCXSsYHHA.3628@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date Added is stored in the library database, not in the ID3 tags. The ID3 tags are stored in the file. What does the date added say for the files that do not show up in your recently added list?


Dale

"watercress_soup" <someone@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:OftehEpYHHA.3848@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
i had a similar problem on xp a few weeks ago. my recently added list was empty and wmp cpu usage hit 80% constant...

i had installed a program,dpoweramp, which added a properties page to mp3 files for editing id tags, thus it seems, screwing up the id tags for wmp. i read/heard/experienced that wmp isnt very good at reading tags that arent complete or proper. (also noticed this with video files, but that may have been a codec issue when it was getting a thumbnail). i uninstalled the program and wmp worked fine.

i now have the same issue on vista, minus the excessive cpu usage, (on a new machine). i moved all my music over and everything was displayed in recently added. i have only had vista for a about 2 weeks and suddenly nothing shows up in recently added.

i havent had any wmp updates. maybe it is something to do with the id tags? i dont know.

steve



"zachd [MSFT]" <zachd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:uYRj4QnYHHA.3256@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

To clarify, I wasn't suggesting that that would possibly fix the issue, simply that it was a really really necessary troubleshooting step to check in order to move forward. "Date Added" is obviously not a required attribute for this to work right, so um... yeah, duh to Dale. By default Date Added is off in that view, guy. =)

Given that *you* can repro this and *others* cannot (where 'you' is scoped to the people who reported this), the question is what is the uniqueness and commonality about your systems. Knowing if the "Date Added" field validates correctly is a basic sanity check here, and the most interesting basic potential differential to check.

Given that it's a simple database query, it would seem to be either that the data is invalid or that the results are wrong. You just partially checked if the data is invalid - thank you for that.

But I actually asked a really specific question:
===
What are the values of Recently Added for tracks that you want to show
up, versus the current date set on your PC?
===
, which wasn't answered and is maybe the key question about the data.

My earlier question is still the logical first step towards assessing this regardless. If that pans out correctly, then again we're still looking for system uniqueness about your systems. So what's the current full date and time zone on your system? What changed between the working and broken states?

The internal query for Recently Added is:
AcquisitionTime GreaterThanOrEquals (month)/(day)/(year)
(minus the 30 days).

The AutoPlaylist RecentlyAdded query would by default be:
Acquisition Is Later Than Last Month

I'm not 100% certain of how that last one maps out internally - it may map back out to the same equation, but ... that's the face value difference.

So, yeah - the next aspect of the question is your full system time setting. If that checks out and it's not random library corruption, I don't see any other very interesting areas in this problem surface that could be looked into. I bow to the wisdom of others here, though. Just trying to help. =)

-Z
--
Speaking for myself only.
See http://zachd.com/pss/pss.html for some helpful WMP info.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
--

"George Gee" <georgegee@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:%23gV$akjYHHA.2320@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Also for the record.

Recently Added seemed to be working fine, but is now completely empty,
although I add stuff daily!

Have made no changes, nor have I run Windows Updates recently.

George Gee



"Dale" <nospam@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:e5h5%23KgYHHA.4692@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Yes, it was a ridiculous suggestion in the first place to imply that you have to have Date Added showing on your library view columns for the feature to work. You do not. Nor do you have to have any other standard column showing for them to work. Obviously, non-standard columns such as Custom1 or Custom2 would have to be shown to work because it is only editable if it is showing. That behavior does not apply to Date Added.

There are a lot of things in WMP that are shown that are not generally useful. There are a lot of things that are either generally useful, very useful, or just plain necessary for a media player that are not available in Windows Media Player.

Date Added is populated for every track in my library even though I did not have Date Added displayed in my columns.

But just for the record, Recently Added appears to be working for me.

Dale

"OrsonJ" <OrsonJ@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:94BA5948-FD13-48EE-ABA4-59787BB40FAC@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date added values for albums/tracks which should in theory be showing under
'Recently Added' are all accurate, so I guess that's one simple explanation
we can discount.
--
OrsonJ


"zachd [MSFT]" wrote:


I can't reproduce this issue. "Recently added" is "Current Day - 30"
against the "Date Added" column in the library. (You have to turn that
explicitly on using Choose Columns, since it's not generally useful.)

What are the values of Recently Added for tracks that you want to show up,
versus the current date set on your PC?

--
Speaking for myself only.
See http://zachd.com/pss/pss.html for some helpful WMP info.
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
--
"OrsonJ" <OrsonJ@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:2E1BD5DF-34DD-4DDA-87DA-106A9653C66F@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Returning to this thread after a few weeks, it would seem that > many of the
> experiences echo my own - the 'Recently Added' function suddenly > started
> to
> work (for no discernable reason) and today stopped working again > (for no
> discernable reason). It seems to have a mind of its own!
>
> Does the reporting of bugs like this via this forum get fed into > the WMP
> development programme? Or should one email them somewhere else? > Given the
> millions of pretty random 'error reports' that must be fired off > to
> Microsoft
> daily, these very specific complaints must surely be useful?
>
> -- > OrsonJ
>
>
> "zachd [MSFT]" wrote:
>
>>
>> Something has *not* been done - this is all stuff that's on >> your local
>> system that the team would have no ability to update or fix >> randomly.
>> There
>> are four small updates available for WMP11 - search for >> "windows media
>> player 11" fix at http://support.microsoft.com , or it's linked >> at the
>> top
>> of my FAQ - but none of them should affect this.
>>
>> -- >> Speaking for myself only.
>> See http://zachd.com/pss/pss.html for some helpful WMP info.
>> This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and >> confers no
>> rights.
>> --
>>
>> "trehug" <trehug@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>> news:49D629E1-12E9-4B68-BF74-2FECFEF1F7DC@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> > in the interest of science and truth everywhere, i must >> > report that my
>> > "recently added" now appears to work again. i am going to >> > monitor it
>> > now,
>> > because i have a certain lack of confidence - but possibly >> > this has
>> > been
>> > resolved?
>> >
>> > it would be nice to hear anykind of confirmation from the >> > mp11 team
>> > that
>> > something has been done.
>> >
>> > thanks
>> >
>> > "trehug" wrote:
>> >
>> >> me too....sadly - it started working again after all those >> >> updates,
>> >> and
>> >> then
>> >> STOPPED again. very weird!
>> >>
>> >> any advice yet guys? thanks a lot/trev
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> "Steve Swift" wrote:
>> >>
>> >> > > Me too.I just assumed that "recently" implied "within >> >> > > the last 10
>> >> > > seconds".
>> >> >
>> >> > My "Recently Added" just started working. I don't know if >> >> > it was
>> >> > caused by:
>> >> >
>> >> > Something I did (accidentally). (I'm voting for this one)
>> >> >
>> >> > The 18 critical updates applied by Microsoft Update a >> >> > couple of days
>> >> > ago.
>> >> >
>> >> > Having a spread of dates upon which albums were added, so >> >> > some are
>> >> > noticeably newer than others (you need such a spread for >> >> > the term
>> >> > "recent" to have much meaning)
>> >> >
>> >> > The direction of the wind.
>> >> >
>> >> > -- >> >> > Steve Swift
>> >> > http://www.ringers.org.uk
>> >> >
>>
>>
>>













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