Getting confused on this !

[_Chris_]

All tracks, playlists, db and MM all installed on the external hd, they play great on the desktop, all greyed out and unplayable on laptop 1, but play great on laptop 2?? Why could there be this quirk on laptop 1 please?

[nohitter151]

Is the drive letter different for the hard drive from one laptop to another?

[_Chris_]

Is the drive letter different for the hard drive from one laptop to another?

I assume you refer to the external hard drive where everything for mm gold is? If so, when I tried to play the tracks on laptop 1, which was a brand new laptop, it DID initially give the ext hd a different drive letter, then when I saw that the tracks were greyed out, I guessed what might have happened, so chnaged the drive letter for the external connected to that particular laptop, to the correct drive letter, but the tracks were still greyed out??

Any help much appreciated.

Chris

[_Chris_]

Is the drive letter different for the hard drive from one laptop to another?

I assume you refer to the external hard drive where everything for mm gold is? If so, when I tried to play the tracks on laptop 1, which was a brand new laptop, it DID initially give the ext hd a different drive letter, then when I saw that the tracks were greyed out, I guessed what might have happened, so chnaged the drive letter for the external connected to that particular laptop, to the correct drive letter, but the tracks were still greyed out??

Any help much appreciated.

Chris

Would love to get this one solved.

[Lowlander]

Did you do a Portable Install of MediaMonkey on the external drive? If you did, did you use an old non-portable DB?

The problem you're experiencing is: http://www.mediamonkey.com/wiki/index.p ... w_computer , but should happen with Portable Install.

[_Chris_]

I did a non-portable install. I would have done a portable install, but it wasn't available at the time. What do I do next?

[Lowlander]

I would uninstall and do a Portable Install.

[_Chris_]

I would uninstall and do a Portable Install.

Would I lose any of the playlists already created?

[Lowlander]

Here I don't know what to answer. The DB (including Playlists) won't be lost on uninstall, but I don't know if a non-Portable DB can be used in the Portable environment (moving it to different PC's). The DB does work with a Portable Install so you should try it and see if it still causes issues with drive letters.

[_Chris_]

Here I don't know what to answer. The DB (including Playlists) won't be lost on uninstall, but I don't know if a non-Portable DB can be used in the Portable environment (moving it to different PC's). The DB does work with a Portable Install so you should try it and see if it still causes issues with drive letters.

I have a few external hard drives knocking about, so which way shall I do it?

If you wanted to ensure that all your playlists on your external hard drive were exactly the same on every pc/laptop you plugged it into, how would you do it please?

[_Chris_]

Also, does anyone know why, when plugging an external hard drive into one computer, then later on another computer, the playlists are different??? I'm on MM Gold paid for and on both systems, the os is win xp pro.

If I knew why the above was happening, it would help me to understand the problem more and maybe I or someone else here would know a quick fix?

Any help much appreciated.

Chris

[nohitter151]

Also, does anyone know why, when plugging an external hard drive into one computer, then later on another computer, the playlists are different??? I'm on MM Gold paid for and on both systems, the os is win xp pro.

If I knew why the above was happening, it would help me to understand the problem more and maybe I or someone else here would know a quick fix?

Any help much appreciated.

Chris

The playlists are different how?

[dannyno]

If you have MM installed separately on each PC, then perhaps the problem is that you are picking up separate settings, in local files?

The advantage of the portable install onto your hard-drive is that you can ensure that everything is the same wherever you plug in your external hard drive.

I had similar difficulties with MM installed on more than one computer, as the settings etc were never completely the same. Then I bought a NAS and installed MM portably onto it. My computer and laptop now each have a desktop link that points to mediamonkey.exe as installed on the NAS and I have exactly the same setup wherever I happen to be. Nothing is otherwise installed on the computers.

I had no particular problems moving my pre-existing non-portable-created database (always available to all computers on the network anyway on a shared drive) onto the NAS, other than I obviously had to update the location of the files.

I dimly remember something about exporting and importing playlists, but I'm not sure about that or whether it was related to portable installation (I did have separate playlists in my separate MM installations).

I haven't tried installing MM portably onto an external drive, but if you have a spare hard drive, why not experiment a bit? Put 10 tracks on it, install MM portable, build the database. Then try plugging it into different computers and running MM from it.

If that works, then I reckon you could comfortably download MM portably onto your hard drive, make sure the DB (back it up!) is in the right place to be found by it, and go ahead and see what happens. Everything is then in one place. What could possibly go wrong?

[Lowlander]

Are the Playlists AutoPlaylists that are criteria based and may have Path criteria? Another possibility is that a different DB is picked up (a local install one).

[dannyno]

Playlists are stored in the database aren't they? So they do have all the problems associated with wrong paths, drive letters etc.

I guess the question for _Chris_ is where exactly their db is?

It's a bit puzzling, because I just noticed that in the initial edit, _Chris_ said "All tracks, playlists, db and MM all installed on the external hd", but then later said "I'm on MM Gold paid for and on both systems."

I have been responding based on the latter, but perhaps irrelevantly if the former is actually the case.

Perhaps _Chris_ can clarify?

The symptoms sound like either separate DB files in local installations based on externally stored files, or else a DB on an external drive where the drive name/letter is not consistent between machines accessing it.