WMP11 "Find Album Info" not working

When I right click on a song or album and choose "Find Album Info", a window pops up with the title "Find album information". Just below the title bar, there is a small globe icon with the text "redir.metaservices.microsoft.com" next to it. Below that, there is an HTML error page saying "This program cannot display the webpage".

My internet access is through an HTTP proxy. The proxy log contains the following entries:

1196776940.701 425 172.20.1.52 TCP_MISS/302 992 GET http://redir.metaservices.microsoft....ir/submittoc/? - DIRECT/64.4.52.182 text/html
1196776941.095 395 172.20.1.52 TCP_MISS/200 1298 GET http://fai.music.metaservices.micros.../default.aspx? - DIRECT/207.46.248.240 text/html

So WMP connects to redir.metaservices.microsoft.com, gets redirected to fai.music.metaservices.microsoft.com, then for some reason gives up and displays a generic error page.

If I try to access http://fai.music.metaservices.micros...I/default.aspx using IE7, I get a similar error page, this time saying "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage".

Anybody know what is going on? I am running fully patched XP/SP2, by the way.

I found several other people reporting this problem, but no solutions.

It looks like those pages check the user agent string. Typically that
would begin with NSPlayer. Is there any chance your proxy strips or
impersonates the UA string ?

The redir site is normal, and determines where your IP is to send you
to a regionalised lookup (I think). FAI is the actual album info
lookup metadata service.

At this point, my first step would be to delete Cookies and Temporary
Internet Files in IE (which WMP shares) and try again.

Quite possibly. The proxy is Squid, which I believe is in widespread use. I tried socksifying WMP/IE7 using FreeCap, but it just crashes

Tried that already - no joy. Any other ideas? Do you think anyone at MS might be interested in solving this?

OK, I checked this Squid is passing through the user agent string just fine. Here it is:

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; InfoPath.1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; FDM)

I also enabled user agent logging in Squid. When I hit "Find Album Info" in WMP, the resulting HTTP request contains the user agent string above. No sign of "NSPlayer" anywhere in the string. (Though when I first start up WMP, there is some HTTP traffic with the user agent string "Windows-Media-Player/11.0.5721.5230".)

I got the same problem and our IPCop firewall uses Squid as well, any
further ideas that might sort it?

Using lynx with a direct connection, I dumped the HTTP headers

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Cache-Control: private,max-age=86400
Connection: close
Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 17:06:13 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
X-AspNet-Version: 2.0.50727
Content-Encoding: gzip
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Transfer-Encoding: chunked

And again, but this time via the proxy:

HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Cache-Control: private,max-age=86400
Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 17:06:13 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
X-AspNet-Version: 2.0.50727
Content-Encoding: gzip
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
X-Cache: MISS from xxx.yyy.com
X-Cache-Lookup: MISS from xxx.yyy.com:8080
Proxy-Connection: close

I wonder whether the problem is due to Squid's lack of support for HTTP 1.1.

I have a similar (if not identical problem; I just know that I never get
album art these days) and I have no proxy set on my system. It's
entirely possible that my ISP (British Telecom) is running a
"transparent" proxy of some sort.

Using IE6, gives me the same
HTTP_USER_AGENT string as I get fetching a webpage from the apache
server that I run on my own PC, so it looks unlikely there is anything
fiddling with my User_Agent identifier.

Those are the response not the request headers. If Squid is using
HTTP/1.0 then it will not be passing the HOST header up to the
metaservices address (the IP that's resolved from the DNS name
fai.music.metaservices.microsoft.com)

In that case, it could be another site hosted on that server
(presumably a cluster using reverse-proxy due to traffic volume) is
responding to the content request - or that you're not maintaining the
same server connection throughout repeat requests

You're probably seeing CACHE MISS from Squid because of
which mandates the private cach-control directive to make the cache
not keep a copy of the content.

Similarly, the server is sending Vary headers which AFAIK should not
be routed through HTTP/1.0 caches. WMP and IE share internet settings

So I guess the obvious question might be - in IE, Tools -> Internet
Options -> Advanced -> HTTP 1.1 settings : Is 'Use HTTP 1.1 through
proxy connections' ticked ?

HellllP! I looked at this below, and it wasn't ticked. The first box, Use
HTTP 1.1 was ticked. I un-ticked it... it still didn't work. I ticked the
one you mentioned below, and it didn't work. I un-ticked it again and
nothing.

I am not really computer savvy, but I have a broadband connection through a
cable modem. My Find Album Info isn't working either. Any suggestions?

Is it working currently? It sounds like your UserAgent isn't set or is
being stripped by some part of the request process... ?

[stevebentley]

I have read the posts on this subject with interest. You won't believe it but it is a fire wall problem.

Disable your firewall and it works fine. The site is blocked by the firewall. I have tried to enter the address fai.music.metaservices.microsoft.com into the allowed sites but this has not worked.

Sorry that I can only identify the problem and not provide the solution. Over to you for that.

Just push the button Reset Internet Explorer Settings,and Find Album Info works immediately

Tools - Options - Advanced - Reset Internet Explorer

I deactivated my firewall and clicked on the Album information and the data was downloaded. I deactivated it through the antivirus (bitdefender) because at the control panel it was not giving me the option to switch it off.

[Lucius79]

I am fairly certain I have been experiencing the same problem. My ms WMP11 is refusing to find album info and instead gives me this same error message every time. Much searching of internet blogs and forums has proved fruitless, especially the microshaft websites. Here's what I know so far:
1.) No, my internet seems to connect. I use firefox instead of IE8 mostly, but they both connect.
2.) No, I guarantee you the album info is in there. and finally...
3.) No, reinstalling WMP11 did not fix anything.

Finally my search brought me here, and here I have registered if only so I can reply to this one thread. Maybe I'll find more answers here later. A lot of what I read on this thread seemed to me that it was going down the wrong path of questioning which is something I am getting very used to.

"Disable your firewall"?!? I thought I needed that to block malicious attacks from the internet!!

I did follow your easy to follow instructions for resetting my IE8 settings. That fixed the problem!!! Thank you very much! I'm constantly tinkering, trying to make my machine better and work out all the kinks and learn how to not mess it up. Lots of fun reading. I guess I must have accidentally done something to the internet explorer settings that inadvertently screwed WMP11 up. I don't know exactly. I was assuming that the new .NET Framework 4 update my Windows Update told me to get has done bad things to my system without letting me know about it. I remember that there were multiple fixes that had to be released to get service pack 3.0 working properly, so I'm assuming I just have to keep waiting until all the bugs force a patch come out. There are several other programs I'm using to tweak my sytem, so I guess any one or combination maybe of them could have created the error problem I suppose. I thought, "Maybe they're updating the site?"