Windows 10 WMP playlist names only last 3 hours

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conundrum

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Nov 2, 2011
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Hi, I've recently encountered a problem in windows media player on a windows 10 machine that I can't figure out the reason or solution for. Simply put, any playlist that is renamed will revert to it's original name after about 3 hours. This happens regardless of whether it is renamed in media player, or if the playlist file itself is renamed in file explorer. It doesn't seem to make a difference if the program or even the system is restarted during that time, playlists maintain their new names even a complete restart, but only until the 3 hour time limit is up.

I don't understand what causes this. If it was a setting in media player, shouldn't it just stop the playlists being renamed or revert them on startup? If it's some form of file protection in windows, the same argument could be made. Any suggestions would be much appreciated.
 
Solution
I think Josephur might be onto something. If you are using a Microsoft account login (and not a Local login) for W10, you most likely have OneDrive connected to your Music folder where the windows media files live. If that's the case they could inadvertently be re-syncing the copies on your W10 device back to the old playlists stored in your OneDrive folders. It's possible to selectively UNCHECK folders in your OneDrive setup from within W10. You might have a look at that and uncheck the whole music folder in your OneDrive setup. If the playlist names last longer than the 3 hour limit, you've solved your problem! You then have to figure out how to redirect the syncing of the OneDrive to your music...
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Are you sure you aren't renaming a file then CTRL+Z(Undo)ing at some point thus undoing the file rename? This sounds completely bizarre. Also there is a rename setting under WMP settings that attempts to rename files based on internet information found on the files, might want to check into that. Also might want to temporarily disable the Windows Media Network Sharing service to see if it is the culprit.
 
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I think Josephur might be onto something. If you are using a Microsoft account login (and not a Local login) for W10, you most likely have OneDrive connected to your Music folder where the windows media files live. If that's the case they could inadvertently be re-syncing the copies on your W10 device back to the old playlists stored in your OneDrive folders. It's possible to selectively UNCHECK folders in your OneDrive setup from within W10. You might have a look at that and uncheck the whole music folder in your OneDrive setup. If the playlist names last longer than the 3 hour limit, you've solved your problem! You then have to figure out how to redirect the syncing of the OneDrive to your music folder to only go from W10 music folder-->OneDrive music or vice-versa depending on whether your Master copy lives in your W10 music folder or the Master lives on your OneDrive music folder. Worst case, you can just uncheck the music folder in OneDrive permanently if the directional syncing I suggest doesn't do the trick. This sort of thing also occurs with iTunes on iPads and Macbooks.

Let us know how it turns out!
<<<BIGBEARJEDI>>>
 
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Solution
Thanks for the advice, and apologies for not getting back to this thread sooner, but this seems to have gotten a lot stranger than it looked at first. The computer in question isn't mine, I just keep fixing it when this happens. The 3 hour time limit seems to have been resolved by the user changing both the playlist name in WMP and the filename to match each other. Unfortunately this might just have been a symptom of something bigger. For a long time now, I've had to go and fix this particular music collection because of things happening to it. Sometimes large portions of it are deleted, renamed, or duplicated. Sometimes the names of .mp3 files are changed, breaking the playlists, sometimes the playlists are renamed or changed in some way. To try and fix this, I've turned off all options I could find that automatically rename or move music files.

I've just had a call to say that a large portion of the library has been duplicated, apparently there are now 2 copies of the files themselves. At the same time, a lot of the entries in the playlists are now broken and won't play. This is on a completely new computer running a different version of windows, the machine this started on was a windows 10 tablet, now the problem has apparently moved to the windows 8.1 desktop which has another copy of the same music library. I don't understand what keeps causing this to happen, there seems to be no pattern to it, the files just won't stay still.
 
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Sounds like you have corruption in your friend's WMP music library or it's a syncing problem. Did you disable the Music folder in OneDrive on the W10 tablet? Did you temporarily disable the Windows Media Network Sharing service to see if it is the culprit, as per Josephur's suggestion in Post #2? Please answer these 2 simple questions if you want further help from us.

Thanks,
BBJ
 
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Sorry, I should have mentioned earlier. I didn't have access to the tablet between the time I started this thread and the time I had a call to say the issue had been solved (it still seems to be, on the tablet at least).
I disabled synching in OneDrive on the desktop when I set up windows, but I did notice later on there were messages implying it was still synching something. The music library seemed unchanged though, and at that point I thought the problem had already been solved so I didn't probe it further.
I haven't disabled the Windows media network sharing service yet, so that's something to try next time I can take a look at the system as well as checking OneDrive again. So far, the problem hasn't happened while I've been watching, it seems to take days or weeks between issues.
 
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No problem, conundrum. Thanks for your informative reply back to us!

Often this type of a problem is due to intermittently failing hardware in the computer/laptop/tablet/netbook computer. I'm going to post a link that includes hardware testing and links to diagnostics to do this. In this post I just wrote about 1 hr. ago tonight, I have a link that discusses windows rollback and reset/reinstallation for more drastic problems as well as solving insidious intermittent problems such as your friend's. Have a look at this post here: Windows 10 - Unclickable Task Bar
Specifically the entry point to my Post is POST #6 in this link.

Going through these 2 posts should produce a result of about 90% success rate even on stubborn intermittent problems as you are having.

Let us know how it goes, and if you can don't forget to post back your SPECCY output files back here so we can analyze your friend's W10 tablet as well as your W8 desktop. Please identify which SPECCY file is for which device.

A word of caution I will repeat here, is that the 2nd post applies drastic measures in reapplying windows systems files/registry as well as partial or complete windows reinstallation which is a DESTRUCTIVE process so:
Before doing any kinds of Windows repairs on your own, we strongly suggest that you FIRST BACKUP ALL OF YOUR PERSONAL DATA TO EXTERNAL MEDIA! THIS WOULD INCLUDE YOUR LIBRARY FOLDERS FOR DOCUMENTS, PHOTOS, MUSIC, VIDEOS, AND ANY SAVED E-MAILS OR ATTACHMENTS.

Thanks!
BBJ
 
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