Playing music stored on USB drive

I backed up a lot of my CDs onto USB drives but when I attempt to play them
in Windows Media Player I get a message that reads:

"Windows Media Player cannot find the file. If you are trying to play, burn
or sync and item that is in your library, the item might point to a file that
has been moved, renamed, or deleted."

One drive works but the rest do not. If I copy the file from the USB drive
to my hard drive I can play the file but I don't want to have to do that
every time I want to listen to the file. This only happens on my laptop that
is on Windows Vista. If I put the USB drive into my desktop which is an XP
machine I don't have an issue playing the songs from the thumb drive.

Also, when I attempt to disconnect the stop the thumb drives it says they
are in use even if I have no programs running.

Please help. It's driving me nuts.

Thanks.

"klrmsg" <klrmsg@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:D6EC5E81-06E8-4B12-A385-71A90FEE10F4@microsoft.com...
>I backed up a lot of my CDs onto USB drives but when I attempt to play them
> in Windows Media Player I get a message that reads:
>
> "Windows Media Player cannot find the file. If you are trying to play,
> burn
> or sync and item that is in your library, the item might point to a file
> that
> has been moved, renamed, or deleted."
>
> One drive works but the rest do not. If I copy the file from the USB
> drive
> to my hard drive I can play the file but I don't want to have to do that
> every time I want to listen to the file. This only happens on my laptop
> that
> is on Windows Vista. If I put the USB drive into my desktop which is an
> XP
> machine I don't have an issue playing the songs from the thumb drive.
>
> Also, when I attempt to disconnect the stop the thumb drives it says they
> are in use even if I have no programs running.
>
> Please help. It's driving me nuts.
>
> Thanks.

Vista is driving everybody nuts...

The USB drive probably got a different drive letter assigned by Windows,
and the filenames in WMP's library still have the old drive letter, so
they aren't valid anymore. You can verify this by enabling the File
Name-column in the library (Detailed view).

A simple fix would be removing and re-adding all affected files,
although this will make you lose all their library-specific metadata
such as ratings and play counts.

Regards

--
Tim De Baets
http://www.bm-productions.tk

klrmsg wrote:
> I backed up a lot of my CDs onto USB drives but when I attempt to play them
> in Windows Media Player I get a message that reads:
>
> "Windows Media Player cannot find the file. If you are trying to play, burn
> or sync and item that is in your library, the item might point to a file that
> has been moved, renamed, or deleted."
>
> One drive works but the rest do not. If I copy the file from the USB drive
> to my hard drive I can play the file but I don't want to have to do that
> every time I want to listen to the file. This only happens on my laptop that
> is on Windows Vista. If I put the USB drive into my desktop which is an XP
> machine I don't have an issue playing the songs from the thumb drive.
>
> Also, when I attempt to disconnect the stop the thumb drives it says they
> are in use even if I have no programs running.
>
> Please help. It's driving me nuts.
>
> Thanks.

On Sat, 1 Aug 2009 23:36:01 -0700, klrmsg
<klrmsg@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:

> "Windows Media Player cannot find the file. If you are trying to play,burn
> or sync and item that is in your library, the item might point to a file that
> has been moved, renamed, or deleted."
> One drive works but the rest do not. If I copy the file from the USB drive
> to my hard drive I can play the file but I don't want to have to do that
> every time I want to listen to the file. This only happens on my laptop that
> is on Windows Vista. If I put the USB drive into my desktop which is an XP
> machine I don't have an issue playing the songs from the thumb drive.

Welcome to the magical world of Vista and DRM.

--
Bob
http://www.kanyak.com

I tried playing the files using Dell Media Direct and they played just fine
there and will now play in Windows Media Player as well. The naming issue
seems to be the problem. If it does it again I'll just switch to Media
Direct and be done with it. :)

Thanks for the help!

"klrmsg" wrote:

> I backed up a lot of my CDs onto USB drives but when I attempt to play them
> in Windows Media Player I get a message that reads:
>
> "Windows Media Player cannot find the file. If you are trying to play, burn
> or sync and item that is in your library, the item might point to a file that
> has been moved, renamed, or deleted."
>
> One drive works but the rest do not. If I copy the file from the USB drive
> to my hard drive I can play the file but I don't want to have to do that
> every time I want to listen to the file. This only happens on my laptop that
> is on Windows Vista. If I put the USB drive into my desktop which is an XP
> machine I don't have an issue playing the songs from the thumb drive.
>
> Also, when I attempt to disconnect the stop the thumb drives it says they
> are in use even if I have no programs running.
>
> Please help. It's driving me nuts.
>
> Thanks.

Why not just play the files on the thumb drive through
RealPlayer or IrfanView and leave WMP to its misery?

===

"klrmsg" <klrmsg@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:AEBE00FB-D2FD-4685-BC81-7CF70B36FBB9@microsoft.com...
>I tried playing the files using Dell Media Direct and they
>played just fine
> there and will now play in Windows Media Player as well. The
> naming issue
> seems to be the problem. If it does it again I'll just switch
> to Media
> Direct and be done with it. :)
>
> Thanks for the help!
>
> "klrmsg" wrote:
>
>> I backed up a lot of my CDs onto USB drives but when I
>> attempt to play them
>> in Windows Media Player I get a message that reads:
>>
>> "Windows Media Player cannot find the file. If you are
>> trying to play, burn
>> or sync and item that is in your library, the item might
>> point to a file that
>> has been moved, renamed, or deleted."
>>
>> One drive works but the rest do not. If I copy the file from
>> the USB drive
>> to my hard drive I can play the file but I don't want to have
>> to do that
>> every time I want to listen to the file. This only happens
>> on my laptop that
>> is on Windows Vista. If I put the USB drive into my desktop
>> which is an XP
>> machine I don't have an issue playing the songs from the
>> thumb drive.
>>
>> Also, when I attempt to disconnect the stop the thumb drives
>> it says they
>> are in use even if I have no programs running.
>>
>> Please help. It's driving me nuts.
>>
>> Thanks.

[dorothee]

Well, if this could help anyone: I had music ripped to an external hard disk which was given a different letter one day after I used a USB key. That was very annoying because Real Player could not find the files anymore.

Instead of starting over with the ripping and everything, I renamed my hard disk letter using this very straighforward procedure:

http://en.allexperts.com/q/Windows-X...name-Drive.htm

However, this is annoying if files on WMP are assigned many different letters for the same drive... There must be a way to get around this whole issue, other than changing player...

I am running on Windows XP.