Can't read ID3 tags in files

[RobFreundlich]

I have a library that I have tagged using WinAmp 5.52 on my XP machine. I've shared the folders containing the music files on my home network, and am accessing them from WinAmp 5.56 on my wife's Vista machine.

When I try to import onto my wife's machine, it can't read the tags on some of the files, and so it falls back on the "Metadata Reading Settings". If I use Smart settings, it tries to read the files as Track-Artist-Title. Unfortunately, my naming scheme is Track-Title-Artist, so the files get tagged incorrectly.

First of all, I don't understand why the tags aren't read properly. If I look at the files in Explorer on my XP machine (go to the folder, select a file, hit File->Properties and look at the Details tab), the tags are filled in correctly. If I look at the files in Explorer on the Vista machine, the tags are empty. So that certainly explains why WinAmp on the Vista machine can't see them. So my first question is why? Vista can see the tags in *some* of my files, but not all. It seems to be on an album-by-album basis, so it's possible that the ones it's missing were ripped and tagged more recently (or less) than those that are reading OK.

Second question - is there any way I can force WinAmp on my XP machine to re-write the tags on all files in my library? Maybe that will let Vista read the tags ...

Finally, is there any way I can configure the "Smart" option on Metadata Reading Settings? If I could just tell it the format of the filenames, this'd work OK. But it seems to be hard-coded to Track-Artist-Title, and I'm loathe to change all of my filenames just to support sharing my music library with my wife.