# Solved: ID3 tags lost when transferring MP3 files to another computer



## rajkumari97 (Apr 25, 2011)

Hello,
I've Googled this using lots of different search terms and browsed through lots of results, but couldn't find anyone who had a similar problem (how unlucky can you be?).

I bought a new computer and, when I was happily transferring my files from my old laptop to the new desktop, thinking I had finally got rid of my old, slow, bad computer, I realised most of the MP3 files' info was somehow lost when I transferred them from my Windows XP Home to my Windows 7 Home Premium. I tried using two different USB mass storage units, an external HD and a pen-drive - didn't work. I tried zipping the files before transferring them - didn't work. I tried using iTunes to consolidate the songs into new MP3 files, then transfer them - didn't work. No matter what I do, all album covers but one are lost, and about four fifths of the songs have ZERO info - no album name, no year, no track number, nothing, just the file names as song titles. On my old computer, the info shows correctly both on Windows Media Player (the player I use) and on iTunes, and the Properties window is also fine. This is driving me crazy, because I've got a little bit of OCD and I just CAN'T listen to music with wrong information. A weird thing about that problem is that, even though the info is still right in the pen-drive and in the external HD when I open it using my old computer, the same files have no info at all when I view the contents of the USB things on my new one!

I've transferred MP3 files from that laptop to quite a few others lots of times, and I've never had this kind of problem before. I think I know why this is happening, though. A few days ago, when I was trying to find a way of making the Devanagari script be correctly displayed by iTunes, I read somewhere that you had to change the ID3 format or whatever, and I naïvely did that. Not only it didn't help with the non-Unicode text at all, it literally "cut" my MP3 tags - song and artist names that had more than X characters had all characters after the Xth deleted. I'm pretty sure this problem has something to do with that - I mean, it'd be too much of a coincidence for the two things not to be related, wouldn't it? -, but I'm too afraid to change anything connected to ID3 without clear instructions from someone who knows more about technology than me, because I lost HOURS retyping everything manually (I bet most of the songs I listen to are unknown to the media players, so I wouldn't dare using those auto info finders - last time I used that on an album, I had to undo the mess myself) and I definitely don't want (nor have the time to) do that again.

Could anyone please, please, please tell me how to solve this? I mean... err... it CAN be solved, right? 

Oh, and, on top of all that, even though I've deleted all the MP3 files from my new computer, they still show on WMP. How do I get rid of that ghost music? Selecting the songs on WMP and choosing the "delete" option doesn't help.

Thanks in advance!


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## stantley (May 22, 2005)

rajkumari97 said:


> I was trying to find a way of making the Devanagari script be correctly displayed by iTunes, I read somewhere that you had to change the ID3 format or whatever, and I naïvely did that. Not only it didn't help with the non-Unicode text at all, it literally "cut" my MP3 tags - song and artist names that had more than X characters had all characters after the Xth deleted.


When you tag an Mp3 file it will usually have two types of tags, ID3v1 and ID3v2. The problem is iTunes uses ID3v2.4 tags and WMP uses ID3v2.3 tags. When you used iTunes to "change the ID3 format" it wrote ID3v2.4 tags. WMP and Windows Explorer can't read ID3v2.4 tags, so when that happens it reads the ID3v1 tag instead. ID3v1 tags are a much older version that had fixed field lengths, so that's what you're seeing when you said "had all characters after the Xth deleted".

The good news is it can be easily fixed with Mp3tag, a free tag editor. In Mp3tag go to Tools > Options > Tags > Mpeg and make sure ID3v1 and ID3v2 are checked under both read and write. Leave APE unchecked under both. Make sure that ID3v2.3 UTF-16 is also checked.

Load some Mp3 files into Mp3tag and save them, that will change the ID3v2.4 tags back to ID3v2.3 tags. While you're in there you might want to check some of the other fields to make sure they're correct. Stick with ID3v2.3 tags especially if you have an Mp3 player.



rajkumari97 said:


> Oh, and, on top of all that, even though I've deleted all the MP3 files from my new computer, they still show on WMP. How do I get rid of that ghost music?


Delete the WMP database: http://www.hack7mc.com/2009/02/fix-corrupt-windows-media-player.html

Both iTunes and WMP can cause problems when updating tags and when used together it compounds the problems. Don't use either iTunes or WMP for your music files, get MediaMonkey instead.


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## rajkumari97 (Apr 25, 2011)

stantley said:


> When you tag an Mp3 file it will usually have two types of tags, ID3v1 and ID3v2. The problem is iTunes uses ID3v2.4 tags and WMP uses ID3v2.3 tags. When you used iTunes to "change the ID3 format" it wrote ID3v2.4 tags. WMP and Windows Explorer can't read ID3v2.4 tags, so when that happens it reads the ID3v1 tag instead. ID3v1 tags are a much older version that had fixed field lengths, so that's what you're seeing when you said "had all characters after the Xth deleted".
> 
> The good news is it can be easily fixed with Mp3tag, a free tag editor. In Mp3tag go to Tools > Options > Tags > Mpeg and make sure ID3v1 and ID3v2 are checked under both read and write. Leave APE unchecked under both. Make sure that ID3v2.3 UTF-16 is also checked.
> 
> Load some Mp3 files into Mp3tag and save them, that will change the ID3v2.4 tags back to ID3v2.3 tags. While you're in there you might want to check some of the other fields to make sure they're correct. Stick with ID3v2.3 tags especially if you have an Mp3 player.


Thanks for helping, but that didn't work. :/ Actually, when I opened one of the files that weren't working on Mp3tag, it said it was already in ID3v2.3. I tried saving it and transferring it to the new computer, but all tags were blank there. That couldn't have been the problem, anyway - if the tags were in ID3v2.4, why would they show correctly in my laptop, both on WMP and Windows Explorer? Also, I changed ALL files' ID3 version, so ALL of them should have blank tags, not just most of them. I think the problem might be something in the computer, and not in the files.



> Delete the WMP database: http://www.hack7mc.com/2009/02/fix-corrupt-windows-media-player.html
> 
> Both iTunes and WMP can cause problems when updating tags and when used together it compounds the problems. Don't use either iTunes or WMP for your music files, get MediaMonkey instead.


That didn't work either.  I did that twice and everything's still there.


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## stantley (May 22, 2005)

Use Mp3tag to look at the tags on the old computer, transfer the file to the new computer and then use Mp3tag to look at the tags on the new computer. Make sure APE tags are unchecked.

What do you see?


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## rajkumari97 (Apr 25, 2011)

ID3v2 isn't an option under read nor write; only ID3v1 and APE (under Read)/APEv2 (under Write) are there.


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## stantley (May 22, 2005)

Here are a couple screen shots to show you which boxes should be checked:


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## rajkumari97 (Apr 25, 2011)

I selected everything exactly like you did on the images, and the tags do show on Mp3tag on my new computer, but Windows Explorer still refuses to read them. :/ I think I'll just have to enter all info manually using Windows Media Player for Windows to be able to read them. .-. Thanks anyway.


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## stantley (May 22, 2005)

Look in the tag column, does it say ID3v2.3 or ID3v2.4?


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## rajkumari97 (Apr 25, 2011)

Oddly enough, it says ID3v2.3, just like it should. Maybe my not being able to delete the Windows Media Player database is preventing it from correctly reading that file's information?


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## stantley (May 22, 2005)

After you stop the Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service delete all the files in \Users\YOUR USERNAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Media Player.


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## rajkumari97 (Apr 25, 2011)

Thanks a lot, I've just fixed WMP! Before, I was deleting just CurrentDatabase_371.wmdb, like that link said. Though I still have the ID3 problem. :/ This is really weird.

*ETA:* I had decided I'd add all the tags manually, but I've just found out even that is impossible. T_T The ID3 tags of the tagless files can't be changed! I can't change them with Mp3tag (I save, save and save and they're still blank on Windows Explorer), I can't change them using Windows Media Player (again, I add the right info, but it's still blank on WE, and every few minutes the info I added on WMP is removed from there too), and I can't change them using the properties tab (I click on the property I want to add, but I can't type - in fact, that's happening to ALL files, even the ones with the right info: I just can't change anything on the properites tab). The Advanced Tag Editor on Windows Media Player is nowhere to be found as well - I have that feature on my old computer, but it's not on the new one. It's as if the files were read-only, even though they're not. Gosh, I'm starting to think I'll have to redownload everything... what a nightmare! T_T


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## stantley (May 22, 2005)

Do you get any error messages when you try to change the tags with Mp3tag or Windows Explorer? If so, what are the exact messages?



rajkumari97 said:


> The Advanced Tag Editor on Windows Media Player is nowhere to be found


Microsoft got rid of the Advanced Tag Editor in WMP 12: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Media_Player_12



> The Advanced Tag Editor (ID3 tag editor), which allowed users to edit metadata for media files file, is removed. The tags can still be edited by displaying the tag column in the Library and left-clicking the tag to edit, or by installing a third-party tag editor, for instance the Windows Media Player Plus! add-in. You can also still edit the tags from Windows Explorer by right-clicking Properties on the file to edit and selecting the Details pane.


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## rajkumari97 (Apr 25, 2011)

No, I don't get any error messages. When I edit them with Mp3tag, it looks like everything went fine, but when you go look at Windows Explorer, they're still blank. When I try to edit them with WE itself, nothing happens; I click, but I can't type.


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## stantley (May 22, 2005)

Post a screen shot some of your music files in Mp3tag and make sure you include the tag column.

Something like this:


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## rajkumari97 (Apr 25, 2011)

These are the files on Mp3tag; shiny correct info. These are the very same files on Windows Explorer; only some of them have tags. And trust me, the top of the alphabetically ordered list, which is on that screen shot, isn't even that bad; the mess is worse among the files whose names' initial letters are between "ha" and "lab", and the ones starting with "su" as well.


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## stantley (May 22, 2005)

Well, I'm stumped. As you can see in Mp3tag, the tags are fine. But for some reason Windows 7 can't read the tags on some of the files. There doesn't seem to be any type of pattern as to which files it can read to ones it can't.

I don't have Windows 7 so I can't do any testing, maybe someone who has Windows 7 will have an idea.

You might try posting this problem on this forum: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showforum=1


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## rajkumari97 (Apr 25, 2011)

I have one last idea. Since iTunes created the problem, it may be able to solve it. I'll download iTunes (I don't have it on my new computer yet) and try to change the ID3 version using it, which is what caused this mess. If that doesn't work, I'll post on that other forum. Thanks a lot for your help anyway. 

*ETA:* I've just done that, with no results. :/ Though at least all the tags are correct on iTunes; if they weren't, I would've never been able to connect my iPhone to my computer again, or all the songs would be messed up there too.

*E**TA:* I've just solved my problem!  The link for the solution is here, should anyone face a similar issue.


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