Windows Media Player lists every track in one album twice

Question

Using WMP12 on W7. I downloaded a ZIP of MP3 files (a free album) and unzipped into one of the "My Music" scanned locations. WMP added it to the library, but most of the tracks are listed twice.

There is only one copy of each .MP3 file... WMP simply shows each track twice, including the same track number.

I looked online but only found solutions to wipe the entire DB and re-scan. Surely there is a better way?

Answer 1

This might be caused if the Windows Media Library is corrupted. You may try to rebuild the Media Library and check if that helps.

To rebuild the library, follow the steps mentioned below.

• Shutdown windows media player.

• Stop the media sharing service.

• Go to Start; type Services.msc

• Right-click on the “Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service” and select Stop.

• Navigate to “c:\Users\”your username”\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Media
  Player.

• Now delete the files named CurrentDatabase_***.wmdb and
  LocalMLS_*.wmdb.

• Start the media sharing service.

• Now start Windows Media Player and watch it build up your library
  again.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

The duplicates may come from a playlist file. If there is a .m3u .pls or .cue in the zip file then most likely WMP is loading all mp3 files and the playlist which contains paths to the same mp3 files. So, if there is a playlist file, try removing it