Updating Windows Media Player Library

Windows Media Player is an excellent multimedia player packaged with Microsoft Windows. Many users store music and video files in multiple places on their computer, such as an external hard drive. To ensure that all of your media is playable, it is important to ensure that your Windows Media Player Library is up to date. This is a simple process, and each location for your media only needs to be added once. The following guide will show you how to quickly update your media library.

To begin updating and adding additional folders to your library, start Windows Media Player and click "Library," then "Add to Library," then "By Searching Computer."

Now, select the locations you would like to scan for media by clicking "Browse" in the "Look in" field of the "Add to Library by Searching Computer" window. Click "Search" once you have selected the proper directory to scan. Repeat this step if you have additional folders that you wish to include in your library.

Click "Library" again, then "Add to Library," then "By Monitoring Folders." This will ensure that new files added to your selected folders will also be added to your media library in Windows Media Player. Click "Add" to select a folder from your computer to monitor, which will give you the option to select any media folders you wish to have Windows Media Player automatically keep up to date when files are added to them in the future. Repeat this process to add more folders to monitor.

In the "Add to Library by Searching Computer," you can also search your entire computer, including all external and secondary drives, by selecting the appropriate options in the "Search on" field.

Remember that this process can be applied to folders containing audio, video and photo files, as Windows Media Player supports all three.

Once you have setup Windows Media Player to use the appropriate folders, ensure that all future media is put into the appropriate folder based on the type of media (video, audio, and photo) you are dealing with. If you place the files in another location, you will have to add the new location to your media library for it to be available in your library.