How to fix album art not showing up on your device

[Gg]

This is a fix for all the people who have album art in the Zune software but have little or none of it showing up on the Zune itself.  It originally started in this thread.

• If you have any DRMed music, back up your licenses in Windows Media Player.  If not you can skip this step.
  
  • In Windows Media Player 9, go to Tools > License Management.
  • In Windows Media Player 10, go to Tools > Manage Licenses.
  • Windows Media Player 11 doesn't have this feature, so your DRM will be reset and when you next try to play the songs WMP "will contact the online store and attempt to download new rights."  I don't know what the issues are surrounding this so if you have a ton of DRMed music, either wait for a Microsoft fix or proceed at your own risk.
    
    
• Delete all the hidden DRM files on your computer.
  
  • In Explorer, go to Tools > Folder Options, go to the View tab, and turn on "Show hidden files and folders" and turn off "Hide protected operating system files."
  • The folder will probably be C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\DRM.
  • If not try C:\Public\DRM.
  • If not go to Start > Run and type in "regedit".  Find
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\DRM and double click on DataPath on the right.  It will tell you where the folder is located.
    
    
• Upgrade your security components.
  
  • Go to this page using Internet Explorer and click upgrade.
  • If the button doesn't work this may still work without the upgrade so continue anyway.
    
    
• If you had DRMed music with Windows Media Player 9 or 10, restore the licenses from the same screen you were in before.
  
  
• Delete and reupload an album on your Zune.  If it works, do this for all your music.

[Gg]

I just finished reuploading my entire collection, and every single album has art now.  I disconnected my player as soon as it finished syncing too, so there's no leave it overnight type delays.  Why DRM affects album art at all is beyond me, but there you go.

[balistic]

That is the most convoluted, ridiculous fix ever . . . but it seems like it worked. I just saw my first piece of album art.

I was literally going to ship my Zune back to Amazon tomorrow morning, but now I guess I'll keep it.

Thanks dude.

The only thing I can think of that might have messed up my DRM licenses was when I swapped CPUs a month or so ago. Why the hell that would affect album art but not music is beyond me.

Can we get a mod to sticky this thread please? I know others would appreciate it.

[dmanbluesfreak]

I cant seem to get the update button to work.  I am using firefox, mainly because Internet Explorer is not working, so that may be the problem.

So I'm kinda stuck right now, without DRM files...

[SilverMachine]

SWEET!  It worked.  THANK YOU!

I should also add that until now I have never seen an album cover on my Zune since I accidently erased all the pre-installed music the first time I plugged it in.  And I've never used or downloaded any DRM music on my machine so I have no idea why the DRM stuff was messed up.  There was no "Backup Licenses" menu option in my WMP 11 Tools menu either.  But after deleting all the files out of the hidden DRM folder, the "upgrade" button on the website became available and that immediately fixed my album art problem.  Now I get the joy of deleting everything and re-syncing it all...but at least it works now.  Hmmm...maybe I can actually log into the Marketplace and use my 14 day Passport.

[dmanbluesfreak]

GAWD!  I cant get IE7 to work...

[Gg]

GAWD!  I cant get IE7 to work...

I don't know if this will work, but it's worth a shot.  Download IE 6 standalone here.  Unzip the file somewhere and run iexplore in it.  See if you can do the upgrade from there.

Plug-ins tend to be sketchy with the IE standalone hacks, but it might work.

[dmanbluesfreak]

Nah, I got my "techie" friend to help me out - turns out IE7 is an UPDATE of IE6, not a whole new program, so I just uninstalled the update.

Works now.  Trying again.

Damn - IDK everytime I try and goto the update link, firefox opens.

Gonna try again.

[hudnut]

I'm not havnig any luck with this solution.  All of my music is ripped and free of any DRM that I know of. I'm using firefox, IE7, and WMP11.  I can't find any mention of DRM anywhere on my computer.

[Gg]

Follow the full instructions here then.  It will tell you how to find the DRM folder if it's not in the typical location.

[trncel]

Thank you so much for posting up the fix:) I was having so much trouble with the album art, was considering returning the zune!!!! Now I can throughoutly enjoy it, once again thank you.

[XMike14x]

StIcKAY!!

[hudnut]

you're a genius!  All I did was make a folder called "drmtemp" and moved the contents of the "drm" folder to the temp.  re loaded my library and that's all there was to it.  I"m using wmp11 and Ie7 so I couldn't use that update link.

[dmanbluesfreak]

So, what exactly did you do, hudnut?

I cant use the update link either, cuz my IE7 isnt working...

[hudnut]

just moved the contents of the drm folder somewhere else.  anywhere will do.

I just formated my zune and am in the process of resyncing everything. The one album I reloaded did work so we'll see if the whole shebang shows up in a bit.

[hudnut]

my sync is done and all of my album art is there.  Thanks all!

[DWFreeway]

what about media player 11?

[Gg]

According to this page you cannot back up and restore licenses with WMP 11 (question 3) and have to try to "download new media license rights" for the files (question 4.)

Yay.  This is why I'll stick with CDs, thankyouverymuch.

On the other hand, it looks like the answer to the question as to where the DRM files are located for WMP 11 is C:\public\DRM.