IWMPPlaylistArray.Item(index) throws IO exception on Windows 8.1

Question

I have a simple application enumerating Windows Media Player playlists. It just gets name for each playlist and prints it to the console:

class Program
{
    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        var mediaPlayer = new WindowsMediaPlayer { uiMode = "invisible" };
        var allPlaylists = mediaPlayer.playlistCollection.getAll();

        Console.WriteLine("Found {0} wmp playlists");
        for (int i = 0; i < allPlaylists.count; i++)
        {
            try
            {
                IWMPPlaylist wmpPlaylist = allPlaylists.Item(i); //Exception here!
                Console.WriteLine("Playlist with index {0} has name '{1}'", i, wmpPlaylist.name);
            }
            catch (Exception e)
            {
                Console.WriteLine("Failed to get playlist with index {0} with error '{1}'", i, e.Message);
            }
        }

        Console.ReadLine();
    }
}

It works fine on Windows 8 but throws exception on Windows8.1 on attempt to get the playlist item from the IWMPPlaylistArray collection:

System.IO.DirectoryNotFoundException was caught HResult=-2147024893 Message=The system cannot find the path specified. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070003) Source=WMP_POC StackTrace: at WMPLib.IWMPPlaylistArray.Item(Int32 lIndex) at WMP_POC.Program.Main(String[] args) in InnerException:

Also it works fine for user created playlists even on Windows 8.1 but for predefined playlists like 'All Music', 'All Video' the exception is occurs.

Please, help!

Answer 1

I have investigated more deeply and I have found that “All Music” playlist which should reside in the “C:\Users[username]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Media Player\Sync Playlists\en-US\00057566” is simply absent on Windows 8.1 while on Windows 8 it exists. And this is seems to be the root cause of the issue.

As I already mentioned on Windows 8.1 the problem exists only for predefined playlists and at the end of the day I have found out the following workaround which is seems to be working on the Windows 8.1. If you want to get "All Music" playlist just use the following code:

IWMPPlaylist allMusicPlaylist = mediaPlayer.mediaCollection.getByAttribute("MediaType", "Audio"); 

By changing "MediaType" attribute according to the table on the msdn you can get "All Video", "All Pictures" etc. predefined playlists.