Can You Clear WMP 11's "Recently Added"?

lordaardvark2

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Well, the title says it all. There are many many things in my "Recently Added" section from forever ago... some probably as old as 7 months, when WMP 11 first came out. Anyway, its kind of irksome, and I was curious if anyone knew how to clean up the Recently Added section.
 

g-paw

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Under Tools, Options, Privacy you can delete most of this stuff. Under Help, Search put in Recently Added and then search for more into
 

lordaardvark2

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thanks for the reply. i did both of those things, but it cleared a different list than the one i wanted. what bothers me is that the recently added tab thing not only has recently added things, but also ALL added things... when i go to look for new music i have to search through all my old stuff pretty much, and its kind of annoying. is clearing this even possible? i remember in older versions it would just clear it after so many days... but its definitely been more than "so many" days.
 

g-paw

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At least in WMP 11 you can delete the files under Recently Added but you have to do it one at a time, Right Click, Delete. The other thing you could try would be go to Windows Explorer, Tools, Folder Options and unhide all the file types including the System Files. Then find where the Recently Added info is stored, use Search and try to delete them. Of course anytime you start deleting these kind of files you can get into trouble. One way to avoid this would be to create a Playlist of your new stuff. You can title it by date or however you need to know how to get to what you want
 

lordaardvark2

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that is a VERY good idea. i think i'll just do that playlist thing. i don't want to delete the things from my recently added section, i just want them to go away and live ONLY in my library, rather than both places at once. but, i'll just throw my new music into a playlist and it'll all be good. thanks for such a good idea, and thanks for your time and help, too!
 

g-paw

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Glad I could help, always good to help another music lover. I've found the better organized my music is, the less time I waste trying to find it and the more time to enjoy it. Creating folders, playlists, and tagging really helps and is pretty easy once you get the hang of it. I use a program called Media Monkey that not only makes it easy to create folders and tag music files but let's you save the music in your playlists as mp3 files, which means if you ever have to reinstall the program you used to create the palylist, decide to use a different player, or move your music files, you don't lose the playlist. Of course you end up with duplicates of some of your music files but given how cheap storage is now, this is not a big problem.
 

lordaardvark2

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i'll certainly check into Media Monkey, sounds very nice. i too like to have neat and orderly musics (i love abusing grammar), because it really does just make everything so much easier. may i inquire as to how many musics you have? i just recently passed 10 gigs, and am marginally proud of myself. i bet you have like 50 gigs or something... :lol: well anyway, thanks again for your help!
 

g-paw

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Damn you're good, actually have a little over 52.6GB, a little over 5500 songs. I've have my entire CD collection on my hard drive and running my sound card through a receiver. In about a year or so when we get settled into a new house my project will be to digitize my albums, which I figure will take over a year, have albums going back to the early 1960s. If you don't have an external drive, would urge you to get one to back up your music, a lot of work to get it ripped and organized. I find Media Monkey the best player and good for organizing. The problem is it doesn't use Grace Note to download the file info so I'm using Quintessential, free program, strictly for ripping CDs. I listen to a lot of Indie music so it's sometimes hard to find the tag info online. Also have a program called Power Desk Pro, which is like a high powered Windows Explorer that makes it really easy to create and rename folders and files as well as do some tagging. This is Power Desk site
http://www.v-com.com/product/PowerDesk_Pro_Home.html

Would be worth while looking at. 10GB is a lot of music and I'm guessing it will only increase over the years so keeping it organized and backed up is a real challenge.
 

lordaardvark2

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WOW i was real close! damn. thats awesome! hah. yeah, my music has been growing quite exponentially ever since we upgraded from dialup to dsl... cough cough. i actually don't have all my CD collection on my computer... that would certainly boost up the GBs... but i still like listening to CDs. i really really really wanna hook my computer up to my reciever and run it through my snazzy JBLs, but i don't have internet in my room, and WILL NOT USE WIRELESS b/c i game... so i'm confined to headphones for the time being. :cry: i don't have a soundcard, i'm using onboard, but i recently traded out my gaming headset for some nice monitor headphones and the sound quality is AMAZING. i didn't realize how shitty my headset is :)

i have been meaning to get an external drive, not only for my music but also my programs and videos and stuff. i will certainly look into all of the programs that you suggested. thank you so so much!
 

g-paw

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CDs definitely sound better but it's also nice to have your CDs on the computer to set up playlists and the quality is pretty good, rip at 320. If you decide on an external, you can get a good enclosure at newegg for around $30, $35 and put it together yourself. If you get an external drive, another good program is Good Sync, about $20, for backing up your stuff, especially if you have a lot of files. It syncs the backup so it only copies new stuff and changes. My first set of good stereo speakers were JBLs, back in the 60s so JBL has been around for a while, loved those suckers. Great for Magic Carpet Rides :D
 

lordaardvark2

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well, my older brother is an audiophile, and he hooked me up with the JBLs. they sound VERY nice, i love them. they ARE older, he says "from back when they made things with quality parts." i likes them a lot :D

is Good Sync really worth it? i don't mind backing up things myself... do you use it, and does it really make life like 100x easier? i'll think about it, but first of course i have to get an external :lol: thats certainly going as #1 on my list of things to buy in the near future. i love DIYing stuff, so do you think that buying a hdd and an enclosure would be better than just buying an actual external? would it be cheaper?
 

g-paw

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well, my older brother is an audiophile, and he hooked me up with the JBLs. they sound VERY nice, i love them. they ARE older, he says "from back when they made things with quality parts." i likes them a lot :D

is Good Sync really worth it? i don't mind backing up things myself... do you use it, and does it really make life like 100x easier? i'll think about it, but first of course i have to get an external :lol: thats certainly going as #1 on my list of things to buy in the near future. i love DIYing stuff, so do you think that buying a hdd and an enclosure would be better than just buying an actual external? would it be cheaper?

Have Good Sync and it's absolutely worth it. I work out of my house and so I have back up my work everyday. What it does is copies your data to another location, in your case the external hard drive, then when you do your next back up, it only backs up new files and any changes you've made to files including deleting them. Unlike Acronis and some other back up programs, Good Sync saves the files in there original format, e.g., mp3 to mp3. When you're backing up 1000s of files, it's absolutely worth it.

Build the external yourself that way you get exactly what you want and will save you a few $s. A friend of mine just got a Seagate external already assembled, 250GB for about $90 on newegg and recognized right away and I copied a boatload of files to it and worked perfectly if you don't want to build. Another advantage of building yourself is you can change hdd whenever you want.
 

lordaardvark2

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hahahaha another program on my ever-growing list of things to get :D i'll be ready for ANYTHING now that you've helped me out! :lol: but in all seriousness, i will certainly invest in an external device (probably go the DIY route simply because i like to do things myself), and get some of that software you suggested to help me out! i looked at my media, and i have like 6 days of music :) i'm happy.

..now all i need is an mp3 player so i can listen to it away from the computer... (another thing on my list of stuff to buy).

thanks again for everything. take care!
 

edklite

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external/internal drive for backup is a must, I would recommend Acronis with the clone method, that copies all the files as they are but you decide which is whats best for you either way backup, backup, backup ;)
 

g-paw

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external/internal drive for backup is a must, I would recommend Acronis with the clone method, that copies all the files as they are but you decide which is whats best for you either way backup, backup, backup ;)

I've used both Acronis and Good Sync and Acronis creates a tif file, at least I think it's tif, and then you use Acronis to recover the back up which converts it back to the original format where as Good Sync backs up in the original format. There are trial versions of both so when you're ready give each a try. I know I listed a lot of software that is not free and there is some duplication of functions but I've found that the more you get into something, be it music, photos, or video, the more software you're likely to want/need. Always remember the main reason you work is to afford your toys. :D
 

g-paw

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as I said if you clone with Acronis it saves the files as they are eg mp3 will get copy as mp3 ;)

You're right about cloning but I was talking of backing up, which is also an Acronis function
 

g-paw

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cloning/copying is a way of backing up, for OS its the best.

Would agree re backing up the OS and programs but not just data, e.g., docs, music, photos, video, etc, which are frequently added or changed. Backing up data needs to be quick, easy, and often scheduled and this means you only want to backup new or changed files, not those already backed up that haven' changed. Acronis recognizes the difference in that they have Cloning and Backup functions that are independent of each other
 

edklite

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I agree with you on that, for backing up personall file/media files Good Sync is pretty handy because of its sync option ;)