Need help 3.7 million files

[tential]

I'm not even sure what to title this but I'll give the break down.
Windows Media player stores album art. I did not know this, and 3.7 MILLION jpegs have been made. More are made all the time. In fact I cleared up 50 gigs of hard drive space and I've already lost 10. I desperately need help in figuring out how to delete these files.

They are stored in appdata\local\microsoft\media player\art cache\localmls folder. However, because there are 3.7 million files I can't open the folder or my computer will just hang.

PLEASE help this is hell.I only finally just figured out what was wrong after trying to run adaware,, and a defrag and it was taking so damn long and then I realized it was stuck on that folder. Googling lead me to find out the problem but I can't solve it because mine is so damn big.

Thanks for you rtime guys!

 

[theevilsharpie]

Delete them from the command line.

 

[lxskllr]

Delete them from the command line.

and stop using WMP, or turn off that option if possible.

 

[JackMDS]

Make a Bootable CD like this, and run it from the CD drive at Boot.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-5...w-windows-defender-tool-runs-outside-windows/

 

[VirtualLarry]

WUT? This thread was today?

I remember an identical thread several months ago...

 

[tential]

Running from the command line was extremely slow, I didn't even know if it was actually running. I downloaded Fast Copy and tried to delete. I'm getting .2 files a second. This will take me 174 days to delete everything. Any way to do this faster the files aren't even that big. They are so small but I'm guessing it takes up at least 20 gigs of hard drive space and makes running any scan impossible.

Yes, I did a search and found a similar problem to this. I have one of the largest scales of it though. Only thing larger I found was 4 million but it's pretty close to my approximate 3.7 million files to delete.

 

[lxskllr]

del *.jpg /q /s is slow? I think that'll be the fastest you get. Make sure you're in the right directory first.

 

[jhansman]

Yet another reason not to use WMP. But, seriously? 3.7 million JPEGs? You have that many albums on your system?

 

[lxskllr]

Yet another reason not to use WMP. But, seriously? 3.7 million JPEGs? You have that many albums on your system?

I don't know about his particular circumstance, but when I used Windows, I'd get several .jpgs of different sizes in a folder. Nowhere near millions, but more than seemed necessary to me.

 

[MrWizzard]

Yet another reason not to use WMP. But, seriously? 3.7 million JPEGs? You have that many albums on your system?

Couldn't he ghost the drive and just exclude that folder in the imaging process?

 

[tential]

Yet another reason not to use WMP. But, seriously? 3.7 million JPEGs? You have that many albums on your system?

No it's the art cache. It makes like a billion of the SAME album cover apparently. And yes, the del function isn't slow as I don't think it even ever starts. I type it into the command window and then am unable to hit another command. I'm going to leave it on over night when I sleep and see if 12 hours is enough but I dunno. When I looked online I'd see anywhere from 2-5 hours to 2 days for it to finish.

Anything where I can see progress would be really helpful. Right now I'm using FastCopy to delete the files, and it's going at a speed of .27 files per second. At that rate, it will take approximately 180 days to delete all the files in the art cache. It seems to speed up the more files are gone but considering it would take days, even a month or two, for a significant portion of the files to be gone I'm not too optimistic.

 

[gmaster456]

Holy cow! 3.7 Million J pegs? What version of media player is this?

 

[tential]

Windows Media Player 12.

It's apparently a glitch with library sharing. It did not occur on my windows 7 PC but I hear it's possible. It sucks a lot though . I've left fastcopy on for what is now like 3 hours and it's up to .31 files a second which is nice.

Would defragging make file deletion faster? It would take me 18 hours to defrag my whole drive according to O&O defrag.

 

[lxskllr]

I'd just let it do it's thing. Run the delete when you aren't using the machine. It'll get done eventually.

 

[tential]

At a rate of .31 files a second it will be done in 180 days. Still not an option. even at 1 file a second it will be done in a month. Not really a viable option.

 

[lxskllr]

At a rate of .31 files a second it will be done in 180 days. Still not an option. even at 1 file a second it will be done in a month. Not really a viable option.

Why not? It took awhile to accumulate them, it'll take awhile to get rid of them. Computers are good at tedious, repetitive tasks, and they seldom complain.

 

[tential]

I can't defragment, virus scan, or anything with all those files on there. Virus scans and defragmentation all get stuck on them. I can disckcheck my disk for errors which googlechrome says it has one. A lot of stuff. I don't want to have to leave my computer on for half of a year just to delete the files.

 

[Nothinman]

I can't defragment, virus scan, or anything with all those files on there. Virus scans and defragmentation all get stuck on them. I can disckcheck my disk for errors which googlechrome says it has one. A lot of stuff. I don't want to have to leave my computer on for half of a year just to delete the files.

Something has to go through and unlink all of those files which takes time. Months seems excessive, but if del isn't fast enough for you, you'll need to look at using another OS to delete them. You could try a Linux Live CD using NTFS-3G, but I'd guess it'll be even slower.

 

[imagoon]

cmd prompt:

RD /S /Q <insert folder path>

It will still take awhile but it should drop the files via the directory entry structure rather than trying to update the NTFS file table for each deleted file.

PS: start it and go to bed. You watching it delete is a bigger problem than the files being deleting.

 

[Anteaus]

You guys have far more patience than I do. In the time it took to post here and get responses I could have backed my files up, zeroed my drive, reinstalled Windows and been posting about how nice my system is running. I give you guys major kudos for trying to solve his problem though.

 

[Nothinman]

You guys have far more patience than I do. In the time it took to post here and get responses I could have backed my files up, zeroed my drive, reinstalled Windows and been posting about how nice my system is running. I give you guys major kudos for trying to solve his problem though.

But why go through all of that when you can just start up a delete command and forget about it? How long it takes to finish doesn't matter because I can still use the thing while it's working and I leave my PC on 24x7 anyway.

 

[tential]

Because when I use the delete command, and let it run for 5 hours, I lose 0 files and gain 0 HD space. It's not a helpful command if it's not doing anything...

 

[Smoblikat]

Couldn't he ghost the drive and just exclude that folder in the imaging process?

motherofgod.jpg

I think THIS is the ebst solution. Ghost the drive (use acronis) back it up on another HDD, format the current one, put the files back on it with another computer. Voila.

 

[Nothinman]

Because when I use the delete command, and let it run for 5 hours, I lose 0 files and gain 0 HD space. It's not a helpful command if it's not doing anything...

Did you let it complete or did you kill it after 5hrs?

 

[tential]

Killed it. FastCopy is deleting files at 28 files a second without having to sit for hours to start. I'm afraid of the thing just hanging for days and never starting.