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desktop.ini - A hidden file located in Windows folders that saves viewing options for that specific folder. This file can specify an image that is used for the folder icon as well as appearance options for files within the folder. It can be ignored, but if you delete the desktop.ini file, Windows may generate a new one. Mac OS X .DS_STORE files serve a similar purpose.

I use to have this problem when I was playing MP3 music in Windows Media Player for Windows Vista & Windows 7 And then Windows 8, when I played music in Windows Media Player this album art always showed up in the music and would neve go away, I mean I re tagged all my music, deleted the comments, composers, disc numbers, only tagged artists, album info, year, genre, removed the album arts, cause some people just don't add the details to the MP3 correctly, I use Mp3tag for tagging music and removing those annoying comments that says "By some dude who uploaded music please visit my site" blah blah blah anyway.

This is an example of the annoying album art it always showed up even playing any MP3 file on my desktop, I had to format my PC 3 times I thought formating my PC would get rid of this annoying this but sadly it was still the same.

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Then I did lots of Google Search until I found out I had to go to Folder Options and uncheck "Show hidden files and folder drives" "Hide Empty Drives in the computer folder" "Hide protected operating system files (Recommened)" Once I unchecked those then it showed up all the art, desktop.ini, some desktop hidden file here are more snapshots.

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One more:
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Once I deleted all of those then when I played my MP3 music it finally worked the album artwork was gone for good :D

So why does this stuff appear hidden in files?

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by Reverend Jim

Dani AI

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Short summary and practical fix. Album art you keep seeing can come from three places: artwork embedded inside the MP3 (ID3 APIC frames), separate image files that live in the same folder (for example Folder.jpg or AlbumArt_* files), or cached images Windows/Media Player keeps for thumbnails. was correct about embedded art (ID3 APIC); was right that Windows Media Player can download and cache artwork automatically. See the ID3 spec and Microsoft Q&A background for those behaviours. (id3.org)

If the goal is “remove now and stop future reappearance”, follow these steps in order — they are low-risk and reversible:

  1. Turn off WMP auto-downloads (Options → Library → uncheck automatic media/album info download). This prevents new images from being fetched. (learn.microsoft.com)
  2. Close WMP, then delete per-folder images named like Folder.jpg, AlbumArt_{GUID}_Large.jpg and AlbumArt_{GUID}_Small.jpg (search the music folders). (learn.microsoft.com)
  3. Clear WMP’s local database/cache so cached art is removed: exit WMP, open %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Media Player, delete the files there, then restart WMP (it will rebuild the database). (learn.microsoft.com)
  4. Rebuild Explorer thumbnails (if folder thumbnails still show art). From an elevated prompt you can run:
taskkill /f /im explorer.exe
del /f /s /q /a "%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer\thumbcache_*.db"
start explorer.exe

This forces Windows to regenerate thumbnails. (learn.microsoft.com)

Note and caution: desktop.ini is a harmless per‑folder customization file (icon, localized name, view hints). Deleting it may remove folder customizations; Windows will recreate it when needed. If hidden files bother you, re-enable the “hide protected operating system files” option instead of deleting system files. (learn.microsoft.com)

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Member Avatar for caperjack

somewhere in the media player is a setting to download album art ,that why it appears in the foldr .i do beleave this is the cause ,but not positive as i don't really do much with my music excpt play it

Edited by caperjack
Member Avatar for Reverend Jim

Album art can also be embedded in the mp3 file itself as metadata so don't knock yourself out if you end up with album art but cannot locate a separate art file.

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