Recently I was given a gift of a Western Digital external hard drive. To
make it even sweeter, it came loaded with LOTS of music. I changed Media
Player to look at the external drive to locate my music. Everything has been
working just fine, but I noticed that when I start my computer, it takes
forever to actually come up. I can't decide if it is Media player checking
the music drive to see if there have been any updates since it last checked.
I've review my anti virus software scanning schedule and it does NOT perform
a system scan on startup.

This slowdown only started after the addition of the external hard drive.
If it actually is Media Player checking for new music can someone tell me how
to disable that function?

Any ideas or suggestions are welcomed.

Windows XP operating system SP III, Trend Micro Internet Security, WD 750Gb
hard drive.

Did you allow WMP to complete the "update library by monitoring folder"? A
large songdatabase can take some time. If all your songs play and you do not
wish to monitor folders you can remove the monitored folders by going to
tools>options and select the library tab. Click on the monitor folders
button, highlight the folder and click remove.

Thanks Greenmachine,

I checked and sure enough, my external drive was a monitored file. I
removed it and rebooted the computer. The computer still took a long time at
boot up. It takes approximately 4 minutes and 30 seconds to complete the
normal startup tasks, then the computer whurrrs and hummms for an additional
8 minutes. During this time if you click on anything the busy hourglass
appears and it takes a minute or more before the task requested happens (ie
change from the Internet Explorer window to the Outlook Express window).

I rechecked the monitored folder after rebooting and noticed that there are
a number of other files included there that are "automatically added." These
are the normal My Documents folders. I clicked to ignored the automatically
added folders rebooted again. No difference, still the long start up time.

Now the only file active in the Monitored folder is the ripped folder which
does not currently contain anything, so it wouldn't take 8 minutes to check
it.

One other option is turned on however. Add deleted files. I think that has
always been turned on. Because I did not understand what that did, nor could
I locate any information about it in the Help for Media Player, I left it
alone. I have deleted dozens and dozens of duplicate albums. If the system
readds them everytime I reboot that might be the problem. Do you know what
the "add files previously deleted from the library" function actually does?
Should this feature not be checked?

Thanks for any advice you have.


"greenmachine" wrote:

> Did you allow WMP to complete the "update library by monitoring folder"? A
> large songdatabase can take some time. If all your songs play and you do not
> wish to monitor folders you can remove the monitored folders by going to
> tools>options and select the library tab. Click on the monitor folders
> button, highlight the folder and click remove.

Yes Diane the "add deleted files" will do just that, it will rescan your
monitored folders and add songs that were deleted from the library but not
the folder containg the songs. You can change this setting by going to
tools>options>library. Under the update library by monitoring folders put a
check in the delete files from computer when deleted from the library and or
uncheck the add deleted files.

If WMP is not launching at startup then it will not monitor folders or run
background services. It sounds like you may just have alot of process
running at startup and your system my need cleaned up. There is alot of good
tips and tricks on the web and in other forums for doing this task. In
addition viruses and malware have a nasty habit of doing just that at startup.

Hi Dianna
As if you said it is an external drive, disconnect it and restart to see if
it is booting normally. If it is chances are good that your external hard
drive is big in size and needs "defragmentation" and "check disk" both
options available in the properties of drive in My computer. I hope it will
solve your problem. If still problem resides, chances are your system is
being infected and some trojan or virus is accessing the external drive and
creating its files in each subfolder of your external. To check it you can
try a free good antivirus Avira. Search it on google to get a download link.
I hope you will not need it only check disk and defrag will do great. Also
try to insert your external drive in another usb port. (if it is usb)
--
Vanshaj Daga
vanshajdaga2002net********.com
http://www.ak****agroup.co.cc


"Dianne" wrote:

> Thanks Greenmachine,
>
> I checked and sure enough, my external drive was a monitored file. I
> removed it and rebooted the computer. The computer still took a long time at
> boot up. It takes approximately 4 minutes and 30 seconds to complete the
> normal startup tasks, then the computer whurrrs and hummms for an additional
> 8 minutes. During this time if you click on anything the busy hourglass
> appears and it takes a minute or more before the task requested happens (ie
> change from the Internet Explorer window to the Outlook Express window).
>
> I rechecked the monitored folder after rebooting and noticed that there are
> a number of other files included there that are "automatically added." These
> are the normal My Documents folders. I clicked to ignored the automatically
> added folders rebooted again. No difference, still the long start up time.
>
> Now the only file active in the Monitored folder is the ripped folder which
> does not currently contain anything, so it wouldn't take 8 minutes to check
> it.
>
> One other option is turned on however. Add deleted files. I think that has
> always been turned on. Because I did not understand what that did, nor could
> I locate any information about it in the Help for Media Player, I left it
> alone. I have deleted dozens and dozens of duplicate albums. If the system
> readds them everytime I reboot that might be the problem. Do you know what
> the "add files previously deleted from the library" function actually does?
> Should this feature not be checked?
>
> Thanks for any advice you have.
>
>
> "greenmachine" wrote:
>
> > Did you allow WMP to complete the "update library by monitoring folder"? A
> > large songdatabase can take some time. If all your songs play and you do not
> > wish to monitor folders you can remove the monitored folders by going to
> > tools>options and select the library tab. Click on the monitor folders
> > button, highlight the folder and click remove.