When Android Music Players Did Not Show All Songs on an External SD Card

Apparently Android indexes mp3 files on an micro SD card after you insert it into your phone. All music players show the same set of indexed music files.

Unfortunately, the indexing can sometimes be incomplete. When I started up a music player, -- either the Samsung Music Player or the Google Music Player, it did not matter -- I saw some of my songs, but not all of them. I could browse into the folders on the micro SD card and play each of  the missing files, but I just could not find them inside the music player.

My files are inside the "Music" folder, and I do not have a file named ".nomedia" in there.

So I decided to try to get my phone to re-index the SD card. Here are my steps:

1. I turned off the phone.
2. I removed the micro SD card.
3. I restarted the phone to let it know that I no longer have a micro SD card plugged in.
4. I turned off the phone again.
5. I re-inserted the micro SD card.
6. I restarted the phone to let it know that I now have a micro SD card plugged in again.

Sure enough, Android started scanning the micro SD card to index files on it. At first I was a little nervous, because the music players where showing even fewer files than before. But after a while, all mp3 files are found, and my problem is now solved.

Fix Windows 8.1 Cannot Launch “PC Settings” or “Store” Problem

On my Windows 8.1 Desktop Computer, I have two user accounts.  One is connected to my “Microsoft Account” online. It was created when I installed Windows 8.1 on this PC. The other is a Windows domain user account. It was setup when I joined this PC to a local Windows domain.

In the “Microsoft Account”, I am able to run all “Metro Apps” or “Modern Apps”. I can go to “Microsoft Store”, etc. Everything seems to work fine.

But in the domain user account, there are all sorts of problems. In the “Action Center” of the control panel, I kept getting errors saying that I needed to enter a password to connect to a “Microsoft Account”. But when I clicked on “Enter Password”, the “PC Settings” app flashed on the screen, and nothing followed. An icon for “PC Settings” showed up on the task bar, but when I clicked on it, a gigantic “PC Settings”  icon flashed by, and still nothing happened. In the event log, I saw the following:

“Activation of app windows.immersivecontrolpanel_cw5n1h2txyewy!microsoft.windows.immersivecontrolpanel failed with error: This app does not support the contract specified or is not installed. See the Microsoft-Windows-TWinUI/Operational log for additional information.”

I searched online, and it turned out that this had to be fixed by running three powershell commands from an administrator command prompt:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register $Env:SystemRoot\camera\AppxManifest.xml

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register $Env:SystemRoot\FileManager\AppxManifest.xml

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register $Env:SystemRoot\ImmersiveControlPanel\AppxManifest.xml

The link is here:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-winapps/i-cant-open-any-windows-8-apps-including-pc/aaa88b5e-98c6-4958-a896-b991b924e4f0?rtAction=1407081231306

It turned out that this “Add-AppxPackage” command is a cure for the “Microsoft Store” problem as well:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register $Env:SystemRoot\WinStore\AppxManifest.xml

The link is here:

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows8_1-windows_store/windows-81-store-stuck-on-load-loop/827ba1d0-d49b-4aae-87ef-70180b645e48

The Microsoft Store error in the event log looked like this:

“Activation of app winstore_cw5n1h2txyewy!Windows.Store failed with error: This app does not support the contract specified or is not installed. See the Microsoft-Windows-TWinUI/Operational log for additional information.”

Obviously this is not something that we outside of Microsoft could have figured out on our own.  But if this happens every time when a domain user is added to a Windows 8.1 machine, I wonder why Microsoft has not patched it.

Perhaps few in the corporate world care about the “Modern Apps” or the “Microsoft Store”. That cannot be good news for Microsoft. Then again Windows patches have been making my PC not bootable from time to time in the last few months. It seemed to have been caused by an “AMD WDDM1.3 driver update”, but I am not certain. Until I am certain, Windows auto update has to stay at “Off”.