A little while after setting up 64-bit codecs for Windows Vista, my Windows Media Sharing suddenly died (taking my ability to connect to Windows Media Center from my Xbox 360 with it) with what might be the most infuriating error message ever displayed:
Great. Which Windows setting or component has changed? Why does that stop sharing from working? How do I fix it? The “Web Help” link is no more useful. On top of this, whenever I tried to launch Windows Media Player from the Start menu, nothing would happen – inspecting the Task Manager, I could see WMP running, but it wasn’t doing anything. Killing that process would allow me to start Media Player, but if I selected the sharing option, all I got was that despicable error dialog. Anyway, after a ton of trial and error, I found a way to fix things. Seems neither a Windows setting nor a component had changed – the Windows Media Player library database had gotten messed up. Simply going to C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Media Player and deleting all the files there allowed me to start up Windows Media Player. I had to re-specify which folders I wanted to watch, and let it re-create my library. Then I could start sharing again, and re-register my Xbox 360 as a Media Center Extender. I don’t know whether switching Windows Media Player to 64-bit killed things, or whether it was some crashes I had (related to improperly set memory timings), but I’m glad to have music in my living room again.
Update: Apparently this happens on Windows XP, too. On XP, you can find the same folder at:
C:\Documents and Settings\{username}\Application Data\Local\Microsoft\Media Player
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