How to stop WMP from creating album art?

[Cerberus_e]

my whole computer is littered with AlbumArt_{...}'s
how to stop wmp from creating them and that folder.jpg and albumartsmall.jpg

really frustrates me.
I know you can hide system files, but I don't want to because I want to know what hidden files my system has.
so, is there a solution?

a similar question, is desktop.ini really necassary? I searched on google and opened some desktop.ini files with notepad and all it showed was some unnecassary crap, or DOES it have a use?
if it's unnecassary, how to stop windows from creating them? (impossible I guess?)
or is desktop.ini the place where it's stored if you want to see a folder on details,icons,list,thumbnails, what the width of each column is, etc or where is that stored?

[Jeff]

I use Quick Time for all my multimedia needs. Except for DVD watching. I do that on my Sony DVD player or from my DVD+/-RW drive using Cyber Power DVD and a S-Video cable to transfer the video onto my TV for a bigger picture.

[Cerberus_e]

so THAT's how to stop wmp from creating albumarts, if I knew this earlier!

[Scotty]

If you download album and track information, that stuff comes with it.

Have you tried searching your music folders for desktop.ini and albumart*.jpg, then sending them to the Recycle Bin?

Don't delete the desktop.ini in "My Music" and "Shared Music", as those contain information to make those folders appear as shell folders.

[Cerberus_e]

yes, I can send them to the recycle bin, but wmp automatically searches the whole HD for mp3's and then saves album art in the folder, even if you don't open those mp3's with wmp.
I'm looking for a way to stop that.
other users on this computer use wmp, and since wmp is "integral" to windows, deleting it is no option.
and I use it for videos anyway because it's the fastest and easiest because it automatically fits in the fullscreen window.

[Scotty]

I thought there used to be an option to look for media information only for new files, but I'm not seeing that in Windows Media Player 10.

The newsgroup for Windows Media Player is microsoft.public.windowsmedia.player. You could try searching that group from Google to see if anyone has asked about this in the past.

[berlin]

I found this forum because I had the same problem. A friend has since told me the fix and here it is; open WMP - Tools - Options - Library and then 'untick' box adjacent to 'Retrieve additional information from the Internet'.

[jimbob]

you can also uncheck it during install, i also hate all that damn album art.
even more so when it links the wrong album to the songs. a few of my songs are linked to a live album and the actuall live album in my list are not linked at all :o

[Geir]

plus, I have also heard of the regestry entery that makes wmp stop doing that... give me a sec to find it.

... ok, you can remove the whole list (but not onece and for all) by deleting "wmplibrary....db" from the "F:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Media Index\" directory