# I want to search for only protected .wma files.



## stranglehold (Jul 7, 2003)

OK, I have some files scattered over my hard drive with a .wma extension . I want to move them to a common directory.

BUT... the kicker is that I want to keep the directories that they are currently in too.


My Music folder has over 2,000 directories and 31,000 files. Most of which are MP3 files. However, scattered in there are nearly 1,000 files of types other than mp3. I want to get them out of there, while keeping them in their properly named directories. But I do not want to have to do it manually.


I want to be left with a My Music folder with only MP3 files, and another folder that would contain the others.


One thing to keep in mind. Some folders in My Music, contain multiple file types. I want to move the odd balls, and leave the mp3's behind while keeping both groups of files in their existing folder name(s).


And to throw in a curve ball...

Most of the files I want to get out are .wma files. However, I only want to get rid of the protected ones, and leave the unprotected ones alone.

What are the chances of accomplishing that?

Can this be done?


Thanks


----------



## stantley (May 22, 2005)

Here's one way to do it. First copy the whole My Music to the new folder, say My Music 2. This will preserve the folder structure.

Use Windows search to search My Music 2 for *.mp3 and delete all of them. Then do a search for *.wma, put the results in Detail view, select Protected for one of the columns, sort by Protected and delete all the non-protected .wma's.

Search My Music for, an example, *.ogg (all of the other formats individually by extension) and delete them. Then do a another search for *.wma, but this time delete the protected tracks.


----------



## stranglehold (Jul 7, 2003)

Those are some ideas I definitely had not thought of.

That will take care of all of the files and folder structure for them, which is great.

However, due to my current structure, it will leave behind some empty directories in My Music and My Music 2. How can I search for and delete empty directories after I get the files out of there?

Can I do it with standard Windows tools, or will I need a Shell extender?

Thanks


----------



## stranglehold (Jul 7, 2003)

Aha!!

I found a freeware utility to remove the empty directories. rmempty.exe


I will spend a little time and work on this.


----------



## stantley (May 22, 2005)

stranglehold said:


> How can I search for and delete empty directories after I get the files out of there?


Another one you could try is Find Junk Files which has a small program that comes with it called Find Empty Folders. It will search a whole drive for empty folders and then you can select which ones to delete.


----------



## stranglehold (Jul 7, 2003)

well, the rmempty program did not remove any sub directories, so I had to do a little more searching.

Thanks for the tip on that program. Sorry to say that it only removed some of the empty folders. There are still very many left. Not sure why yet.


----------



## stantley (May 22, 2005)

I'm not sure why Find Empty Folders didn't find all empty folders, it's works fine for me. Do you have XP or Vista? It's an older program and might not work well on Vista.

You could try Folder Size for Windows which will show folder sizes in Windows Explorer. You could then sort by folder size and delete the 0 size ones. It says that Folder Size was tested on XP but not Vista so it may or may not work with Vista.


----------



## stranglehold (Jul 7, 2003)

Well, I am running XP.

When Find Empty Folders is running, I see that all of the subdirectories are being scanned, but the ones that are empty do not show up on the list.

Folder space does not search any deeper than one subdirectory.



I noticed what is most likely the problem.

There are files in the directories listed as system files. I should have checked that before I started. I did have hidden files shown, but forgot about the other.

Is there a way to delete the directories without regular files - basically ignore the system files.


----------



## stantley (May 22, 2005)

In Folder Options make sure you have "Show hidden files and folders" checked and uncheck "Hide protected operating system files". What are some of the filenames in these folders?

If you use WMP and add album art it creates these system files for each album:

AlbumArt_{C1A1F059-B08D-4EB4-84A9-1B1369F8237A}_Large.jpg
AlbumArt_{C1A1F059-B08D-4EB4-84A9-1B1369F8237A}_Small.jpg
AlbumArtSmall.jpg
desktop.ini
Folder.jpg

The long C1A... string is just an example. Is this what you're seeing or are there others?


----------



## stranglehold (Jul 7, 2003)

Mostly those files. They where definitely classified as operating system fils, as I already had the hidden ones shown.

I got through it, though it was a little more involved than I had hoped. But I did get everything other than the protected files deleted.


----------



## stantley (May 22, 2005)

You can delete those files if you want because WMP will generate new ones if it needs to. Search for AlbumArt*.jpg and Folder.jpg and delete those.

Search the music folders for desktop.ini and delete them but make sure you only delete those and not any of the desktop.ini files in the Windows special folders like My Documents, My Music, My Pictures, etc.


----------

