File count in Windows

[CliffyG]

I had an odd problem the other day, i was looking for an album i knew i had but it wasn't in the library even though it was directly under the monitored folder. To get it in i had to specifically set it to be monitored.

After that i thought i'd have a look at exactly how many files i had and how many were in the library. When i right click on my mp3 folder and go to properties it says i have 4800 files and 362 folders but in media player it says i only have 4290. So i did a search for all files in e:\MP3 and i deleted around 30 jpg's and txt files out, when i selected them all it did actually say 4290 too. I redid the search to make sure i definately selected all hidden folders and hidden files and it still came back with 4290 files. Anyone have any ideas where the extra 510 files are?

[LeperousDust]

Hidden folder.jpg files and thumbs.db files maybe?

[CliffyG]

Looked for hidden files & folders, and have already removed thumbs and jpg's. Can't think what else they could be.

[MarcLister]

I had this problem with my MP3 folder the other week. Winamp said I had X songs yet there were Y files in my folder. I searched for jpgs and thumbs.db. Found some and deleted them. Still though X != Y. Grr! :huh:

Turns out EAC hadn't converted some of the wavs to mp3s. So Winamp was counting only MP3s for some reason yet Windows, rather obviously, counted the wav files as well. Converted them using EAC manually and then at last X=Y. :)

So could be that? Some weird filetypes that your media player isn't picking up or at least not counting.

[CliffyG]

Nope. I did a search for * in e:\mp3 then sorted results by file type and deleted all non music. That amount ties in with my Media Player amount. The odd one is the right click and properties file count.

[MarcLister]

So the search and media player agree. But the folder properties and media player don't? :huh:

Man that's weird. Any chance the media player has counted some songs more than once?

[CliffyG]

Aye the windows search and media player both say 4290, the folder properties says 4800 though so it's the other way round, over 500 extra files hidden away somewhere in that folder apparently.

[Mark]

Open a command promot and run: dir /s /w /a e:\mp3

How many does that give you?

[CliffyG]

4800, on further investigation (/ah) i have 510 hidden files which tallys it up nicely. Good call :). Most of the files are jpg's, quite why they are hidden is beyond me though lol.

[CliffyG]

I turned off the Hide Protected Operating System Files option and the extra files popped into life, they had the Hidden File tick box ticked but were greyed out. Did a new search of * in E:\MP3 and deleted the blighters. Quite why they were seen as OS files i'm not sure as i had the Show Hidden Files & Folders option selected from when i installed the OS.

[Mark]

Reason for them now showing up: they had both hidden and system attributes set.

Somewhat odd for .jpg files to have that though.

[CliffyG]

Aye i know, it looks like they were the album art jpg's though so maybe that kind of explains it. Still shouldn't ever have been given system attributes though.

[MarcLister]

Ah. So you had the hidden files and folders option on show but they weren't as your OS (XP I presume/hope) considered them system files and so hid them in defiance of the show hidden files and folders setting?

[CliffyG]

Aye, never even considered that (obviously :D), it's Vista 64 though.

[MarcLister]

Pfft! You Gooners think you're all that because you use Vista x64. :D

[CliffyG]

:D.

[LeperousDust]

It's great DOS wins again, can't trust anything seriously the windows GUI actually brings up :p

[Mark]

You don't like operating systems, do you? Back to Windows 3.1 for you then. :p ;D

[LeperousDust]

Yeah i'm not having much luck with most at present, i need to get back to XP! Vista is a royal pain on my laptop and lets not mention the U word just now although i had some luck earlier today :)

[Mark]

Vista on your laptop just needs 2GB RAM tbh.

[LeperousDust]

Yeah it's definately on the cards, tbh i may just go the whole hog when i actually get around to it, at present there are 2 * 512, so i've gotta buy two new sticks and it might just be 4gb and i'll lose about 512 until i go 64bit which isn't much of an issue, this laptop should be around for a while i think :)

[Feek]

I've noticed that album art files tend to get flagged as system files.