Fixing Duplicates in Zune Library

The Zune software is great, but there are certainly some bugs. If you have a library with a lot of old content (either downloaded off a file sharing program or ripped from CDs), you probably have lots of missing and incorrect metadata. The Zune software can find this metadata (like album and artist information), but this can also create duplicate albums and artists in your library.

To fix the duplicates, you need to take a couple steps:

1. Under "Settings" > "Metadata and Ratings" > "Media Info", select the option to "Only add missing information" - this will prevent the software from making duplicate entries in the future

2. Run the Microsoft Zune Media Collection Reset Tool to clear your entire library so you can start from scratch (yes, you need to do this to remove the duplicate entries):

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=945319

Running this tool will erase your Zune library (including all that bad metadata) so the Zune software can rebuild the library over again without adding the duplicate data. This will take some time, but it will clear out all those unnecessary duplicates.

Hope this helps!