WMP or Windows 7 Auto Generating folder.jpg

I'm having very frustrating issues with my music library and trying to organize it to have the right album artwork. Here's the scenario below.

Typical scenario

1. Under the library tab every single option is unchecked, specifically "Retrieve Additional Information from the Internet" = UNCHECKED

2. Browse to a folder containing 45 mp3 files. 44 are from one album. The last one is from another band with no album artwork. So it should display the generic music note symbol when I play it in WMP 12 correct? Well it DOES do this if I open it up first.

HOWEVER IF I

3. First file opened in WMP creates a folder and AlbumArt jpeg.

4. Subsequent files opened in that folder now use these jpegs displaying the wrong image for the mp3 file.


Here's the thing, I do not want to keep occurring. WHY is it happening. How do I make it stop most importantly of all? my media library littered with jpegs, I like my files to be portable with any art included within the file.

NOTE: I've even tried making the entire Music folder "Read Only" which I think is very extremely and a higly retarded "solution" but at this point I'm so fed up I'm willing to try anything. However the "Read Only" option is a bunch of crap. It doesn't work. The folder.jpg is still being created by WMP and Windows 7 after I play a song within that folder....

Any workaround to the problem would be well received. As for Microsoft, I'm so sick and tired of this bs.

If anyone knows of a better website on which to ask this question I'd also appreciate that info....

 

Agree, WMP 12 drives me nutz, It seems to love to open full screen after I close it in Library Mode , as well as the lack of the toolbar option that went away with WMP 11 (I think)
ARe you willing to consider an alternative player (I have not tried VLC but it is highly touted on NBR) ?

 

from my tests, it's wmplayer.exe itself creating the files, and one can stop it by denying write permission for your user.

now once you do that, you can't change anything in the folder with your mp3s, and that's not really the option. but it stops the writing.

the only thing that would work is to change the folder.jpg etc (albumart*.jpg, too) to what ever you want it to be, and then deny write permission for your user.

that would still create issues while f.e. deleting the folders, i guess.. but well.. it's kinda bah.. annoying.

i guess a background task should do the trick, waiting for any AlbumArt*.jpg and Folder.jpg to get created, and kill them. or something.

 

It all depends on what you want: Do you want the generic icon, or would you be happy to have the correct album art inserted? If the latter, there's some tools that can help with that (check out MP3tag, or simply insert the proper album art through the right-click menu options). Keeping the generic icon, on the other hand, may be hard.

 

I already have mp3tag which I used to remove the useless garbage info and then added the correct artwork to the mp3s that it matched with.

However after that I was still having the same issue. Its like WMP 12 just says "oh you don't have album art for this file and the folder as a whole so we're gonna automatically force you to use the first picture that we see".

Its just extremely frustrating. The only thing I can think of is to use iTunes or VLC as my media player and hope that that stops the issue.

Apparently there is no fix. I wonder if this same crap will occur in Windows 8....

 

Ah, I think the issue you are referring to applies to MP3s that do not have a GUID, in which case WMP will use the same album art for all such files within one folder, using Album_art_{0000....0000}.jpg as the image. This should not happen for files that have embedded album art, I think. Otherwise, if you allow WMP to find the album art for the unknown file (if WMP can find the MP3 in its databases, then it will add the proper GUID to the file), or if you manually add album art to the file within WMP, that should fix the problem as well. It's a bit of a matter of taste whether or not you like or hate WMP's policy in that respect: On the one hand, it saves a lot of disk space by not adding the artwork to the files themselves, on the other hand, you can run into issues like the one you describe, if your MP3 library is not well organized, and contains files from diverse sources. In that case, it often helps to separate the MP3s from albums into separate folders for each album.

I should say, I understand your frustration, and know exactly what you are going through since I had the same issue last year. Until I decided that my music library was a bloody mess anyway, and organized things properly.