Playlists Disappeared

[Carrell R Killebrew]

Installation: MM 4.1.31.1919 (Lifetime Gold) Win 10. The installation is the non-portable version, MM.exe last modified showing 2/10/2021.

Prior to Christmas, 12/12/2024, my playlists were all there, not quite 30 of them. Last night, 12/30, 2024 they are all gone, every single playlist. I haven't used MM since then, and installed only one game on this computer since then.

The computer has 32G of primary memory, the boot drive is an uncluttered 1GB flash (and MM itself is on that drive), data is stored on mirrored 4TB drives (and no failures are reported), and a third 2TB flash drive is where games go. No drive is even halfway to capacity use. The music itself (about 1TB) is stored on a networked drive which I access across my private hardwired (not wireless) home network. That music is still all there.

The MM database size shows 992,555 KB. Export of all playlists using tools|scripts|export all playlist results in the five default m3u playlists, each 202 bytes in size (empty). If the playlists are all gone, then what is in that MM DB? (almost 1TB of apparently nothing)

So, where did they go? It took hundreds of hours to build those playlists. Is there any recovery of those playlists possible?

This has been the second time (the last about three-five years ago) where the MM playlists have gone *poof*.

If I can't recover those playlists, maybe its time to try a different media management program.

[Lowlander]

First of all, the current release of MediaMonkey is MediaMonkey 2024.

Did you just loose Playlists or also the media files in the Library (if you have Folder Monitoring this wouldn't show, but Added would be recent)? There is an issue in MediaMonkey 4 where it would use the wrong database file due to a Windows issue. You should do a search for mm.db on your whole PC (including hidden and system files). Then compare the found mm.db files based on date and size to see which is currently used, and which may still contain your Playlists.

[Carrell R Killebrew]

Lowlander, thanks for the reply. It was VERY helpful.

I searched as you suggested and found that apparently MM switched to using a 350KB MM.DB file recently created in UserName/AppData/Roaming/MediaMonkey. Why? I've no idea.

I copy-pasted my large file from the MMLibrary folder into that roaming folder and all the playlists are there. Yay!

Why it switched to that roaming folder (and how to switch it back) I've no idea). If you've a clue on how to force MM to use the non UserName/AppData/Roaming/MediaMonkey file, I'd appreciate hearing it.

re using MediaMonkey 2024, I don't know which license I have, a "Lifetime Gold" or "3.x/4.x Gold License". Help|About says "MediaMonkey Gold: Lifetime to..."

Happy New Year!

[Lowlander]

That's a Lifetime License, thus valid for MediaMonkey 2024.

[Carrell R Killebrew]

OK, I didn't know. I'll upgrade immediately.

Thanks again for your help.