Wow.  I'm pulling out what little hair I have left on my problem, which is
effecting a relatively few of my 4000 mp3/wma's .  Album art is screwy on a
few other songs, but at least they maintain the correct tags and filenames.  
My head might explode if it were 12,000.

One thing I noticed after I posted...all of the songs which are being
renamed started out as .rax files.

A couple of years ago my wife purchased some songs, some of which she burned
to a cd.  I took the cd and ripped it because I liked some of the songs.  All
of the ones I'm now having problem's with.

When I decided to purchase my wife an iPod Touch for our anniversary
(today), I realized I needed to update the music library with all of the
album art (which I never bothered to use or keep for myself).  I also needed
to rip the rest of her cd's, but in secret here at the office otherwise she'd
know what her present was.  The fastest way to get it all done, supposedly,
was to use WMP11.

Big mistake.  I would have used iTunes (since the iPod only works with
iTunes anyway), but I can't load iTunes here at the office thanks to
draconian IT rules (I did load it at home without her noticing).  I was
hoping to have her library formatted and ready to go, so that I could just
copy and paste it tonight after I give her the iPod.  Now I'll have to
actually fix stuff, and that will take the fun out of it.

Good luck with your library...I suggest reading the FAQ on rolling back to
WMP10 or switching to a better software provider (iTunes, Media Monkey, Music
Match, etc).  Certainly don't run WMP11.

For myself, based on what I've read over the past 2 days, and the number of
problems people are having with WMP11, I'll be taking my laptop home and
loading iTunes away from the watchful eyes of IT.  Thank God for admin
rights....

To the album art problem, I've noticed one other thing...the files with
constantly changing album art are all in one directory.  I maintain my
library such that "albums" each have there own directory, and the 300 or so
"singles" are lumped in together.  The album art associated with separate
albums ends up stored in the separate directories, and remains static.  The
album art for the singles ends up in the "singles" directory.  4 or 5 singles
will always show the "folder" art instead of the correct album art (which is
there).  If I were to continue to use WMP11, I would probably set up
different directories for each single just like I have for each album.

But, if the wife is going to be using iTunes at home anyway, it's easier for
me to switch programs than try to reconfigure my library to correct
Microsoft's bad programming.