{"id":3321,"date":"2016-06-22T13:08:20","date_gmt":"2016-06-22T07:38:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/198.58.113.91\/blog\/?p=3321"},"modified":"2019-05-12T02:54:38","modified_gmt":"2019-05-12T02:54:38","slug":"wmp-overwrite-album-art-folder-thumbnails-fix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.winhelponline.com\/blog\/wmp-overwrite-album-art-folder-thumbnails-fix\/","title":{"rendered":"WMP Overwrites Album Art and Folder Thumbnails. How to Stop it?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the biggest annoyances with Windows Media Player is that it sometimes overwrites your custom <a href=\"https:\/\/www.winhelponline.com\/blog\/remove-mp3-album-art-embed-images\/\">album art images<\/a> as well as folder thumbnails, replacing them with lo-res images.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.winhelponline.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/thumb-white-border-4.png\" alt=\"folder thumbnails with white border\" width=\"235\" height=\"140\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-3318\" \/>The dimensions of the updated folder.jpg would be 200&#215;200 as available from WMP&#8217;s meta information source. But <a href=\"https:\/\/www.winhelponline.com\/blog\/folder-thumbnails-white-border-windows-10\/\">as we&#8217;ve seen before<\/a>, exact square images can be a slight inconvenience in Windows 10, as the folder thumbnails are shown up with a white border.<\/p>\n<p>200&#215;200 is shown with white border, but any non-square images are shown stretched in thumbnail\/large icons view. The workaround, of course, is to crop the image accordingly as in article <a href=\"https:\/\/www.winhelponline.com\/blog\/folder-thumbnails-white-border-windows-10\/\">Folder Thumbnails Appear With White Border in Windows 10<\/a>. The <strong>problem<\/strong> now is, Windows Media Player would reset your custom hi-res folder.jpg with the low-res (200&#215;200) ones from Microsoft&#8217;s meta data servers, every now and then.<\/p>\n<h2>Stop WMP from Updating Folder Thumbnails and Album Art<\/h2>\n<p>There are different ways with which you can prevent WMP from overwriting custom folder thumbnails and album art images.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Using Windows Media Player &#8211; Preferences<\/li>\n<li>Using the Registry Editor to set invalid Album Art size<\/li>\n<li>Lock down folder.jpg using NTFS Permissions<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Each of the above methods are discussed below.<\/p>\n<h3>1. Windows Media Player &#8211; Preferences<\/h3>\n<p>Open WMP, click Tools (ALT + T), Options. Click the Library tab<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.winhelponline.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/wmp-meta-overwrite-3.png\" alt=\"wmp overwrite album art\" width=\"399\" height=\"532\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3323\" \/> <\/p>\n<p>Uncheck <b>Retrieve additional information from the Internet<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Now select the <b>Privacy<\/b> tab<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.winhelponline.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/wmp-meta-overwrite-4.png\" alt=\"wmp overwrite album art\" width=\"399\" height=\"532\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3322\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Uncheck these two options:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Display media information from the Internet<\/b><\/li>\n<li><b>Update music files by retrieving media info from the Internet<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Click OK. Close and re-open Windows Media Player.<\/p>\n<p>If for some reason, you find Windows Media Player still updating the folder images and Album art images, then follow one of the methods below.<\/p>\n<h3>2. Using the Registry Editor<\/h3>\n<p>Now, the idea is to purposely set out of range value data for SmallAlbumArtSize and LargeAlbumArtSize registry values using the Registry Editor, so that Windows Media Player simply skips overwriting the images.<\/p>\n<p>Start <strong>Regedit.exe<\/strong> and go to the following branch:<\/p>\n<pre>HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\SOFTWARE\\Microsoft\\MediaPlayer\\Preferences<\/pre>\n<p>Create these two REG_DWORD (32 bit) values:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>SmallAlbumArtSize<\/li>\n<li>LargeAlbumArtSize<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Set the value data for the above values to ffffffff (hexadecimal)<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.winhelponline.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/wmp-meta-overwrite-1.png\" alt=\"wmp overwrite album art\" width=\"600\" height=\"355\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3325\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Repeat the same for <b>LargeAlbumArtSize<\/b> registry value, and exit the Registry Editor.<\/p>\n<p>With these registry values set, Windows Media Player doesn&#8217;t update your folder thumbnail image (folder.jpg) and AlbumArt*.jpg images.<\/p>\n<p><i>(<b>Credits<\/b> to <b><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/hydrogenaud.io\/index.php\/topic,75461.msg662593.html#msg662593\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">koawmfot<\/a><\/b>, a user at hydrogenaud.io forums who was probably the first to find this fix back in 2009. The fix also works in Windows 10.)<\/i><\/p>\n<p><b>REG file format<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Here is the REG file for the above setting. Copy these lines to Notepad and save the file with .reg extension. Double-click the file to apply the above settings automatically.<\/p>\n<pre><code>Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00\r\n\r\n[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\Software\\Microsoft\\MediaPlayer\\Preferences]\r\n&quot;LargeAlbumArtSize&quot;=dword:ffffffff\r\n&quot;SmallAlbumArtSize&quot;=dword:ffffffff\r\n<\/code><\/pre>\n<h3>3. Locking down Folder.jpg Using NTFS Permissions<\/h3>\n<p>Another approach would be to lock down folder.jpg so that no application can write to it. This can be done by removing all inherited permissions for the file, and then granting &quot;Users&quot; group Read permissions for the file, so that Explorer can still read the file during thumbnail generation. Here are 2 ways to do it.<\/p>\n<p><b>Option 1: Using Command Prompt (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.winhelponline.com\/blog\/take-ownership-of-file-or-folder\/\">Icacls.exe<\/a> command)<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Open your folder which contains the mp3 files. From the File menu, click Open command prompt. In the Command Prompt window, type the following and press ENTER:<\/p>\n<pre>icacls folder.jpg \/inheritance:r<\/pre>\n<p>Then type: <\/p>\n<pre>icacls folder.jpg \/grant BUILTIN\\Users:(R)<\/pre>\n<p>You&#8217;ll see the following message for each command entered:<\/p>\n<p><i><b>&nbsp;processed file: folder.jpg Successfully processed 1 files; Failed processing 0 files<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n<p><b>Option 2: Using the Permissions dialog<\/b><\/p>\n<p>1. First, configure Explorer to Show all files, and unhide Protected Operating System files (in Folder Options, View tab), as folder.jpg may be <a href=\"https:\/\/www.winhelponline.com\/blog\/show-hidden-protected-files-right-click-toggle\/\">super-hidden<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.winhelponline.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/wmp-meta-overwrite-6.png\" alt=\"wmp overwrite album art\" width=\"443\" height=\"174\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3326\" \/><\/p>\n<p>2. Right-click folder.jpg, click Properties. Click the Security tab, and click Advanced.<\/p>\n<p>3. Click <b>Disable inheritance<\/b>, and click <b>Remove all inherited permissions from this object<\/b>.<\/p>\n<p>4. Click Add, click <b>Select a principal<\/b><\/p>\n<p>5. Type <b>Users<\/b>, and press ENTER<\/p>\n<p>6. Enable the <b>Read<\/b> checkbox and uncheck all other permission check boxes.<\/p>\n<p>7. Click OK.<\/p>\n<p><i>If you have any additional\/explicit Permissions set for this file, you may need to remove them all first. Otherwise, WMP might still write to folder.jpg.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>8. You should now have only one permission entry for the file, that one which you added.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/www.winhelponline.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/wmp-meta-overwrite-2.png\" alt=\"wmp overwrite album art\" width=\"379\" height=\"160\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3324\" \/><\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;re done. Inherited permissions for this file removed, and Users group have Read access for this file. Windows Media Player should no longer be able to update your images. The only downside of the Permissions method is that you&#8217;ll need to do this for each folder that contain a music album.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the biggest annoyances with Windows Media Player is that it sometimes overwrites your custom album art images as well as folder thumbnails, replacing them with lo-res images.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[441,676],"class_list":["post-3321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-windows","tag-registry","tag-windows-media-player"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3314,"url":"https:\/\/www.winhelponline.com\/blog\/folder-thumbnails-white-border-windows-10\/","url_meta":{"origin":3321,"position":0},"title":"[Fix] Folder Thumbnails Appear With White Border in Windows 10","author":"Ramesh","date":"June 21, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"When you set a folder picture via the Customize tab in folder properties or by editing the Desktop.ini file manually, the folder thumbnail may show up with white border in Windows 10, as in the image below.Folder thumbnail behavior in Windows 10.When the same folder picture is used in Windows\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Windows 10&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Windows 10","link":"https:\/\/www.winhelponline.com\/blog\/category\/microsoft\/windows\/windows-10\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"folder thumbnails with white border","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.winhelponline.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/thumb-white-border-1.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9730,"url":"https:\/\/www.winhelponline.com\/blog\/disable-folder-thumbnails-without-disabling-thumbnail-preview-for-files\/","url_meta":{"origin":3321,"position":1},"title":"Disable Folder Thumbnails without Disabling Thumbnail Preview for Files","author":"Ramesh","date":"June 10, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"When a folder contains one or more images in it, the contents of the folder are shown as the thumbnail image for that folder. 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