Windows Media Player Rip Location is Stuck. How to Fix it?

Summary: The “Rip Music” tab in Windows Media Player Options dialog shows up an empty location, and the Change button doesn’t work. User is unable to change or set the default Rip folder location.

When the folder that was last set as the default Rip location is missing, Windows Media Player sets your Music folder (as fallback) for the Rip location. So, if the Music folder is inaccessible for some reasons, (say the user moved the Music folder to a removable drive, and the removable drive-letter has changed or the drive is disconnected or inaccessible), the Rip location would show up empty and the Change button remain stuck.

Quick Check: To quickly determine if the Music folder is pointing to a valid folder path, press WinKey + R to launch the Run dialog. Type the following command and press ENTER:

shell:my music

If you get an error similar to the one below, that explains the problem.

G:\Music is unavailable. If the location is on this PC, make sure the device or drive is connected or the disc is inserted, and then try again. If the location is on a network, make sure you’re connected to the network or Internet, and then try again. If the location still can’t be found, it might have been moved or deleted.



Fix the Music Folder Path

To fix the problem, check where the Music folder is pointing to, and change or restore the default location.

  • Open File Explorer, right-click Music folder, and click Properties.
  • In the Location tab, click Restore Default and click OK.

Windows 10 may require an additional/different approach to reset the Music folder path (via the registry). See article Windows 10 User Shell Folders Restore Default Paths especially table #2 in that article and the corresponding registry fix to clear the overriding entries.

Open Windows Media Player and you should see the “Rip music to this location” functionality is restored!


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Ramesh Srinivasan is passionate about Microsoft technologies and he has been a consecutive ten-time recipient of the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional award in the Windows Shell/Desktop Experience category, from 2003 to 2012. He loves to troubleshoot and write about Windows. Ramesh founded Winhelponline.com in 2005.

10 thoughts on “Windows Media Player Rip Location is Stuck. How to Fix it?”

  1. Randomly looking for ‘music’ folders gives 1 likely possibility: in C/users. But properties doesn’t have a ‘location’ tab.

    Reply
    • @Raul: Can you send me the registry export of this key, via Contact form?
      HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

  2. This did not work for me on Win 7. The ironic thing is that I had no problem transferring music CD’s to old 2G SanDisks. When I got new 16G Sandisks, I can’t go from Change to “Browse for Folder”. I’ve followed you instruction and even changed ports, but the problem still exists.

    Reply
  3. Thank you. I had the same problem on Win7. The “shell: my music” command did find the folder, however resetting the My Music folder to default settings in properties did help immediately. I guess I must have ripped a CD directly to my external hard drive beforehand (to save the rather limited storage space on my laptop) and it “forgot” where My Music was.

    Reply
    • Thank you Ramesh! I use Windows 10 on my SONY VAIO laptop and I followed your instructions for changing the rip folder location to an external storage device and it worked!

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