Forcing Media Center to Reload Album Art Cache
by Michael Healy @ 10:00 am on September 8th, 2009 in music library with 16 Comments
Ever cleaned out the music library, removed some albums or updated album art only to find that Windows 7 Media Center is still using the old album art in various places throughout the program? It’s a common problem due to the fact that Media Center utilizes an album art cache that is rarely (if ever) checked for consistency. This means that even after you’ve put all that working into cleaning up tags and album art or downloading high resolution covers Media Center will ignore the fruits of your labor. Let’s take a look a rectifying the problem.
The process is actually quite simple but we’ll cover some of the basics for those not as familiar with finding and working with hidden system files and folders. The first thing you’ll need to do is enable the viewing of hidden files and folders through the control panel. Open up the control panel from the start menu and select Appearance and Personalization.
On the next screen choose the option under Folder Options marked Show Hidden Files and Folders.
This will bring up an options dialog with a large number of settings to customize your folder appearance inside Windows Explorer. By default Windows hides a number of folders that are commonly used by installed programs to store important data to protect them from less experienced users. We’ll need to see these folder to navigate the folder structure to clear our album art cache however.
To enable showing hidden files and folders mark the selection to Show hidden files, folder and drives and press OK. That’s all there is to it. Note that you don’t need to uncheck the option to Hide protected operating system files, nor is it recommended.
Once we can see hidden folders open up Windows Explorer from the programs menu and navigate to the C:\Users folder and open the folder with the same name as your username. Inside you’ll now see a slightly transparent folder named AppData.
Open this folder then navigate into the \local\Microsoft\ehome folder inside. You should now be in C:\Users\USERNAME\local\Microsoft\ehome and there should be a folder named Art Cache. Right click this folder and select the delete option.
Now the next time you launch Windows 7 Media Center and enter the Music section the program will reload all the album cover art from the files. This process could take quite some time depending on the size of your collection. That’s all there is to it! You should now have a completely refreshed album art cache inside Media Center.
