Playlists and albums gone suddenly after years

[Timbo22]

Hi everyone,
My SB 3 has been working perfectly for years, today I connected to the sever to play some tracks and found no playlists, tried to play albums and it showed as playing but nothing on the SB, except the track name and 20% symbols.

So I loaded latest firmware and rescanned. the result was 14 albums 83 tracks, a fraction of my collection. I keep all my music in iTunes and external drive H, although the sever only finds my music through D documents and settings.

That has always been a mystery, but as long as it scans, then fine. But now I don't know what to do.

Hope someone can help,
Tim

SB3 (wired) Windows xp

[toby10]

Try clearing the SBS cache then a Wipe & Rescan.
SBS > Control Panel > Advanced > Cleanup > Clean Cache

[Timbo22]

Try clearing the SBS cache then a Wipe & Rescan.
SBS > Control Panel > Advanced > Cleanup > Clean Cache

Hi thank you so much for your advice. In control panel advance, I found Clean cache folder, including database, artwork cache etc.
Also delete preference files. I have run clean up on both, with no success. The scan still can't find my music library.
Will persevere cheers,
Tim.

[toby10]

I'd verify your SBS is pointing to the correct H drive.
SBS > Control Panel > Library > Music Folder

[Timbo22]

I'd verify your SBS is pointing to the correct H drive.
SBS > Control Panel > Library > Music Folder

Hi,
Thank you for your reply. Well inexplicably my external drive H:\ is now I:\, maybe something to do with my usb stick it went from being Kinston to Hoppy label H:\. Something I had nothing to do with. Scanned I:\ and got my music back, but without playlists. I can find them in I:\ but when scanned they show up in multiple with a lot of other albums, each of them empty. Bit of a mystery this. Never had this problem before.
Thanks again toby
Tim.

[aubuti]

Drives suddenly switching from H: to I: and back again is a common affliction associated with Windows. It just happens that way.

Your playlists are probably hosed for the exact same reason. A playlist is simply a list of tracks, including the pathnames. Most of the time the pathnames are absolute, not relative. So all your old playlists are pointing to tracks on H:\etc\etc\ , which don't exist any longer because they are on I:\etc\etc. So either (a) do a batch search-and-replace of H: and I: in the playlists, or (b) get your system to recognize the drive as H: again. An annoying problem, but simple and easy to fix.

[Timbo22]

Drives suddenly switching from H: to I: and back again is a common affliction associated with Windows. It just happens that way.

Your playlists are probably hosed for the exact same reason. A playlist is simply a list of tracks, including the pathnames. Most of the time the pathnames are absolute, not relative. So all your old playlists are pointing to tracks on H:\etc\etc\ , which don't exist any longer because they are on I:\etc\etc. So either (a) do a batch search-and-replace of H: and I: in the playlists, or (b) get your system to recognize the drive as H: again. An annoying problem, but simple and easy to fix.

Thanks for your reply aubuti I changed the name back to H, and next to it, my PC has added (H:\).

Rescanned and still no playlists. Changed H To D in the playlist category, which is where iTunes live.

This time the scan took about an hour, loads of black lines. When it had finished I had my playlists back, together with lots of text saying "Music rated at 4 or 5 stars" "Pictures taken in the last month", "TV recorded in the last week" and lots of different dates.

Most are empty, some have random songs. So I am getting near to the way it was. I thought I could just delete them, but when I highlight and go along the line, I see SAVE, PLAY, ADD TO PLAYLIST, then M for more, I could swear the last option was delete.

Anyway, thank you for your advice. I would still be scratching my head.

Tim