windows media player- find album info

I'm having a similar problem to this guy. I have WMP 11 in Vista. For the past few weeks I've been ripping my music collection to MP3. WMP has been automatically looking up the CD name and songs names and working just fine.

Then all of a sudden, I got an error message right in the middle of ripping one CD that said "Windows Media Player has stopped working...etc. etc. etc." (no, I didn't save the exact text or an error number or anything). When I reopened WMP, all of a sudden it was incapable of loading any information on CD's. Every new CD that I hadn't ripped before now shows "Unknown Album" and "Unknown Artist".

I get this message with every new CD: "Windows Media Player cannot download media information for this CD. The tracks, artist, and album will be identified as Unknown in your library. For best results, connect to the Internet or manually add media information for the CD."

This seems to indicate that WMP can't get to the internet for some reason (even though I'm signed on). Maybe the suggestion to the guy above is a good one...maybe the Firewall all of a sudden isn't letting WMP access the internet.

Now I'd love to follow your suggestion and check to see if the Firewall is preventing WMP from accessing the internet. But HOW do I do that? Can someone please baby step me through how to do that? I'm using Norton Security not Windows Firewall.

By the way, I did try the Windows Media Player Newsgroups online first. But I'm having problems THERE too. After setting up a user name and signing in, it won't let me post a new thread. I click on New>Question or New>General Comment and it goes and reloads the same page again and never gives me a screen to compose a message. So it's going in circles. And I can't find any place to send a private message to the board leader or anything to ask why it is doing that.

 

Thanks for your help, Tim. I found the list of programs in the Firewall settings. Both "Windows Media Player" and "wmplayer" had their access set to "Custom", and I switched them to "Allow". I also did what you suggested at the Library tab. But nothing changed. It's still "Unknown Album" and "Unknown Artist".

I wish I could find a way to post a message to Windows Media Player Newsgroup online, but as I said, that's not working...I click on "New Message" and it re-loads the same screen and never gives me a screen to compose a message. If no one has any further suggestion on dealing with my WMP problem, does anyone know who I can contact about my problem getting a message onto the Newsgroup forum? Obviously if the only way to get any help is to post a message then I'm out of luck.

 

Ok, before anyone responds, WMP has started working again. It is loading CD and song title information fine now. I guess Tim's suggestions must have worked (thanks so much, Tim!). Strangely, it is taking longer to load the info. Before, it would have the song titles up before it ripped even 20% of the first song. Now they don't come up until the second song is almost finished. But I'll take it!

I'd still like to know how to contact someone at the Windows Media Newsgroup about my problem there, in case something else goes wrong...

 

Sorry Halo, I was confused...since the e-mail that comes notifying me of a response is from "tim@majorgeeks" I thought that you were Tim. I know better now.

Thanks for all your helpful suggestions, Halo. You're the best!

 

I don't know what browser you are using but when a page keeps going in circles for me on FF, I allow javascript and reload the page. I have an addon noscript which I have blocking javascript. When I get to a site that I trust, I temporarily allow javascript and that fixes my problems.