Author Topic: The album dropout menu remains black!  (Read 3385 times)

Steven

  • Administrator
  • Sr. Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 34312
I advise you have all your files backed up and you be very certain of what you are doing before deleting anything. Also how on earth did you get 500,000+ duplicates. Something doesnt sound right

pitkon

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 15
I just realized MB was deleting ALL my files. A good thing my computer shut down. This morning I went to recycle bin and restored 45,000 files MB had managed to delete before the puter shut down.
Like I wrote before, I have a huge collection of over 34,000 artists in mp3/flac format (60s-70s) and I had Music[font=Roboto, "Segoe UI", sans-serif]Bee 3.2 before installing 3.3. I deleted everything 3.2-related (or so I thought). After installing 3.3, I scanned the exterior 6T hard drive where my music lies and MB created a new playlist. However, it seems the 3.2 playlist was never deleted, so I got duplicates.[/font]
Something - a warning of sorts - should be implicated before anyone tries to clean up duplicates. I never clicked on Delete from the Hard Disc as well, so I don't really know what went wrong.
And, again, WHERE should I look for that file that contains ALL records information?
Last Edit: December 15, 2020, 08:08:18 AM by pitkon

frankz

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 3834
It's an *.mbl file that contains your library data.  Whateveryoucalledyouroriginallibrary.mbl.

hiccup

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 7781
500000 duplicates?
Really? Half a million duplicates!?
If that happened to me I would be curious to understand how that happened in the first place, and I would not be looking at MusicBee to magically solve it for me.

Do you have any clue on the origins of this disaster?

pitkon

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 15
It's an *.mbl file that contains your library data.  Whateveryoucalledyouroriginallibrary.mbl.
Thanks so much!!!

pitkon

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 15
500000 duplicates?
Really? Half a million duplicates!?
If that happened to me I would be curious to understand how that happened in the first place, and I would not be looking at MusicBee to magically solve it for me.

Do you have any clue on the origins of this disaster?
Like I wrote before, I used to run MB 3.2 to manage my 100,000+ records collection.
I bought a 6T exterior hard drive to replace my 4T hard drive, since additions meant more space, and I copied everything from the 4T to the 6T (this took a few days :) )
Then, I uninstalled MusicBee 3.2, and then, to make sure there would be no leftovers, I deleted the MB folder and anything left under Program Files. I wanted a clean plate. I installed MusicBee 3.3 and, after deleting everything from the 4T HD, I let MB scan the 6T HD (this took almost a day :) ) Which, btw, had a different drive letter, so there would be no mixup there.
When the scan ended, my library had duplicates of every single entry, as you can see in the screenshots. Seems there was a database file I missed when I was deleting everything MB-related. But, if I did miss it, it must have been under some other folder I didn't know anything about.
No, I'm not asking MB to magically solve my problem. There are no magical solutions, only kind people who help each other in times of need.

pitkon

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 15
LATEST DEVELOPMENT (THANKS TO FRANKZ)!
I found out, thanks to frankz who talked about the mbl file, that I hadn't deleted all old-MB-related-stuff before installing the new version.
There was a MusicBee mbl file from 2019 in C:\USERS\User\Music\MusicBee
So, when installing MB 3.3, the app - for some reason - kept and read both mbl files.
This is a warning to all users who need a clean installation.

frankz

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 3834
It didn't read both files by the way.  That's not possible.  It read the old file and then you imported the same tracks in a new location over again. 

It doesn't sound like these were duplicates.  Duplicates are multiple copies of the same song.  It sounds like they were dead links to files that didn't exist replicated in your newly scanned tracks.  I think you could have solved it by Tools->Advanced->Compress Library, which removes files that no longer exist from the library.

pitkon

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 15
It didn't read both files by the way.  That's not possible.  It read the old file and then you imported the same tracks in a new location over again.  

It doesn't sound like these were duplicates.  Duplicates are multiple copies of the same song.  It sounds like they were dead links to files that didn't exist replicated in your newly scanned tracks.  I think you could have solved it by Tools->Advanced->Compress Library, which removes files that no longer exist from the library.
I wish I knew that before. Thanks again!

frankz

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 3834
It doesn't sound like these were duplicates.  Duplicates are multiple copies of the same song.  It sounds like they were dead links to files that didn't exist replicated in your newly scanned tracks.  I think you could have solved it by Tools->Advanced->Compress Library, which removes files that no longer exist from the library.
I wish I knew that before. Thanks again!
As for removing the incorrect files, I suggest you start with the "show dead file links" option under the Tools menu. If that doesn't help, try the duplicates manager.

pitkon

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 15
It doesn't sound like these were duplicates.  Duplicates are multiple copies of the same song.  It sounds like they were dead links to files that didn't exist replicated in your newly scanned tracks.  I think you could have solved it by Tools->Advanced->Compress Library, which removes files that no longer exist from the library.
I wish I knew that before. Thanks again!
As for removing the incorrect files, I suggest you start with the "show dead file links" option under the Tools menu. If that doesn't help, try the duplicates manager.
I did all that before the minor disaster. The duplicates manager did the damage by starting to delete files from the HD - although I had never checked any relevant box.