WMP Legacy problem

Question

I have used WMP for years, and when my new laptop tried to move me onto the modern "Media Player" I rapidly went and downloaded a fresh WMP Legacy, and there it is now, with all my music on it. But it has now weirdly decided that every album has the very same cover, from an early ELO album, of all things. Why has it decided to do that, and how can I persuade it to revert to putting the correct album cover on each album ? Any help would be HUGELY appreciated !

Answer 1

Hi! David. Thanks for the details and for bringing this up, I'm here to help.

The “every album cover is the same” glitch is usually caused by one of three things, and fortunately it’s almost always fixable. Try these in order, one of them almost always resolves it:

1. Clear the album art cache

WMP caches album covers separately from your music folders. Clearing it forces a rebuild.

• Close Windows Media Player completely.
• Press Win + R → type:
  %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Media Player
• Delete all .jpg and *.wmdb files you see there (don’t worry, they’ll be recreated).
• Reopen WMP. It will rebuild the database. Album covers may initially disappear, then slowly repopulate correctly.

2. Delete incorrect Folder.jpg files

If the ELO cover was accidentally copied into many album folders:

1. Browse to your music library folder (e.g., C:\Users\<YourName>\Music).
2. Turn on hidden items in File Explorer.
3. Search inside that folder for:
   • Folder.jpg
   • AlbumArtSmall.jpg
   • AlbumArt_*.jpg
4. Delete them all. (They will regenerate.)
5. Restart WMP and refresh the library (Organize → Apply media information changes).
6. Rebuild the media library completely

If the above doesn’t fix it, a clean rebuild is best:

• Close WMP.
• Go to:
  %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Media Player
• Delete all .wmdb files (these are your database files — WMP will recreate them).
• Reopen WMP. It will rescan and rebuild the library from scratch.
• Once rebuilt, right-click albums → “Find album info” to fetch fresh covers from Microsoft’s database.

4. (Optional) Manually fix remaining covers

If a few are still wrong:

Right-click an album → “Find album info” → pick the correct one.

Or manually drop the correct Folder.jpg into that album’s folder.

See if this helps. If you need further assistance, just let me know.

Best regards,

Kimberly