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The long and short of it is milkdrop preset ratings and changes do not save in the default install path, and no apparent error from milkdrop, winamp, or windows.
There are a few posts regarding this issue throughout the forums, although they are relatively old, too general, and therefore easy to dismiss.
I am posting on this because of some details I would argue are important regarding this that are not mentioned in previous posts.
(I am running Windows 10 64-bit 1809 under an administrative account and Winamp 5.8)
Winamp installs to Program Files (x86) (Program Files on 32-bit) which is read-only, as well as all sub-directories. Since the presets folder is located here, this is an obvious problem.
The first thing I did was uncheck read-only on the presets folder. Why wouldn't you? Turns out windows doesn't care what you want, that's not your folder. Of course windows doesn't tell you that or give you any kind of error when you do it, but as soon as you're not looking it gets changed back.
You could, as some have suggested, just run winamp as administrator. A quick and dirty brute force solution for sure, but for quite a few reasons I cannot recommend doing this. The main reason why I would not recommend this, particularly for a media player, is now you lose the ability to drag and drop files into the player due to UIPI (User Interface Privilege Isolation - does not allow programs with administrative access to interact with the UI, which in this case is drag and drop). Makes it a pain when you want to play a file not in your winamp library.
The easiest solution is to just move your presets folder to anywhere other than a system or default programs folder. I plopped all of my presets into a folder in my documents. If you do this and are not familiar with all of the milkdrop commands, once milkdrop is running press L (opens the 'Load' menu) and then navigate (..) your way to your new folder location, and select any preset and you're done. You could also just re-install winamp and change the install directory, but that is unnecessary just to solve this problem.
I have been using winamp and milkdrop for a very long time, as well as windows, and I will admit I am a little embarrassed I never caught this until very recently. I have spent more time than I am willing to admit sorting 30k+ presets by rating, only to realize they were not saving. Looking back I know I was dancing around this for a long time, but for one reason or another blew it off. I could probably list 100 things I have seen that should have made me realize this...
Ah well... it is what it is. Just something to be aware of. Perhaps my problem is having so many damn presets
Perhaps it should be suggested as a feature request that at least the documentation be updated, or even that the installer be modified to prompt the user for a preset install folder change. What do I know. I just work here. Wait, no I don't.
Referencing some of the previous posts...
There are a few posts regarding this issue throughout the forums, although they are relatively old, too general, and therefore easy to dismiss.
I am posting on this because of some details I would argue are important regarding this that are not mentioned in previous posts.
(I am running Windows 10 64-bit 1809 under an administrative account and Winamp 5.8)
Winamp installs to Program Files (x86) (Program Files on 32-bit) which is read-only, as well as all sub-directories. Since the presets folder is located here, this is an obvious problem.
The first thing I did was uncheck read-only on the presets folder. Why wouldn't you? Turns out windows doesn't care what you want, that's not your folder. Of course windows doesn't tell you that or give you any kind of error when you do it, but as soon as you're not looking it gets changed back.
You could, as some have suggested, just run winamp as administrator. A quick and dirty brute force solution for sure, but for quite a few reasons I cannot recommend doing this. The main reason why I would not recommend this, particularly for a media player, is now you lose the ability to drag and drop files into the player due to UIPI (User Interface Privilege Isolation - does not allow programs with administrative access to interact with the UI, which in this case is drag and drop). Makes it a pain when you want to play a file not in your winamp library.
The easiest solution is to just move your presets folder to anywhere other than a system or default programs folder. I plopped all of my presets into a folder in my documents. If you do this and are not familiar with all of the milkdrop commands, once milkdrop is running press L (opens the 'Load' menu) and then navigate (..) your way to your new folder location, and select any preset and you're done. You could also just re-install winamp and change the install directory, but that is unnecessary just to solve this problem.
I have been using winamp and milkdrop for a very long time, as well as windows, and I will admit I am a little embarrassed I never caught this until very recently. I have spent more time than I am willing to admit sorting 30k+ presets by rating, only to realize they were not saving. Looking back I know I was dancing around this for a long time, but for one reason or another blew it off. I could probably list 100 things I have seen that should have made me realize this...
Ah well... it is what it is. Just something to be aware of. Perhaps my problem is having so many damn presets
Perhaps it should be suggested as a feature request that at least the documentation be updated, or even that the installer be modified to prompt the user for a preset install folder change. What do I know. I just work here. Wait, no I don't.
Referencing some of the previous posts...
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