Hi, I found a bunch of huge files (some 2gig) on my Tilt's storage card. They are not associated with any program and are named randomly, some with squares in the file name. I'm pretty sure these aren't really files and would like to delete them but can't. Every time I go to delete or rename it says I can't because the file name is invalid or the file location can not be found. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks!
probably a virus.... copy the required files to your PC and format your card.
No Nir its not a virus, i have come across this before.
They are files from Windows Live or Live Search, i am sure it was that.
It saved files that were corrupt as far as i could tell and i was not able to delete them even when using explorer on my PC.
I had to copy all my good files and then format the card, then put back my files back on. All was well after that.
strange... 2gigs? cause I know that specific apps save weird files on the storage card, but huge files which aren't deleteable...
well, as i've never used Windows Live as it's useless to me, I assume i've missed a few microsoft bugs
Yh mine wasnt as big as 2 gigs, and i dont think anyone will ever know all of microsofts bugs, not even microsoft
yeah.. i guess not
format your card.
Related
I dont know why but i renamed a file with ALL of my files and mods, cabs, etc in this folder and now it renamed itself to the 'square' symbol.. meaning it doesnt know what the symbol is..
here is a vid
how do i fix this???
From the looks of the reaction, there's a chance that maybe something screwed with your keyboard as well and added some extra character in there? otherwise, it's like a flash memory corruption case where you have to do a full reformat of the system.
One of the veteran winmo users should have a better answer than I do, but that's what it looks like to me.
ya.. except i shouldnt have to format everything else because every other folder and file on the drive is accessible..
i hope to god someone will have the right answer...
(thanks a bunch though mputtr)
try renaming the folder on your computer connect the phone to your computer and access the storage card and try renaming it there. or creating a new "mods" folder and transferring everything to that. Can you access the folder?
i can access the folder but whats inside is blank, it shows nothing.
and ill try the computer thing but i doubt itll work..
this really sucks,,, its two whole months of collecting things that i really dont want to lose... i know we can solve this problem.. should i contact microsoft??
+1 for memory card corruption
Have you tried to check disk it?
whats that?
checkdisk is a software that you can run from your PC that does a full check up on the drive to see if there is any corruption. I do not know if you can target specific drives, but I assume if TehPenguin suggests it, then it would probably be targettable. do a search on your system for chkdsk.exe. Good luck.
it looks like you might have possibly encrypted your storage card, did you encrypt it and do a hard reset or software update?
so I sync yesterday and notice 3 folders with characters not normally allowed. one contains all "?" while another has / and ?. when I try to delete, system can't since they contain these characters. and I can't find them using total command. any help?
You need to provide more infomation so we can help you .
Which version are you using (WM 6, 6.5, 6.5.3 etc.)? Where are the folders located? Do they contain files?
Sorry. Runninng WM6.5 stock verizon ROM with TF3D 2.0 on my Imagio. And they don't contain any files. I can open, but when I go to delete, it says files cannot contain the following symbols blah blah blah. And I can't seem to find them using TC.
anyone got anything?
Hi Jerry,
JerryA said:
anyone got anything?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are the folders on the SD card ? My suggestions below:
1) If they are, try deleting them from the Windows PC side via an ActiveSync connection or in "Disk drive mode".
2) Try renaming the folders with 'proper characters' and then delete.
3) If in "disk drive mode", try removing them via DOS command. You may want to do a "dir /X" to see the 8.3 short file/folder name and remove them.
Regards.
________________________________
* Today is yesterday's tomorrow. Today is also tomorrow's yesterday.
Then is the present the past's future or the present is the future's past. *
Hi Jerry,
JerryA said:
anyone got anything?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are the folders on the SD card ? My suggestions below:
1) If they are, try deleting them from the Windows PC side via an ActiveSync connection or in "Disk drive mode".
2) Try renaming the folders with 'proper characters' and then delete.
3) If in "disk drive mode", try removing them via DOS command. You may want to do a "dir /X" to see the 8.3 short file/folder name and remove them.
Regards.
________________________________
* Today is yesterday's tomorrow. Today is also tomorrow's yesterday.
Then is the present the past's future or the present is the future's past. *
No, they aren't on the SD card, they are phone memory. Whenever I try to rename them, I get the same error code, telling me files cannot contain the following..... And as for the last, I don't know anything about DOS, so that would require a level of expertise that I just don't have. I haven't seen any strange behaviour on the phone, and my memory size and usage has not freaked out, nor has my battery life. So what they are or what they are for is beyond me.
The 3 files are names thus:
??????
????Documents
oc????
Very odd.
JerryA said:
No, they aren't on the SD card, they are phone memory. Whenever I try to rename them, I get the same error code, telling me files cannot contain the following..... And as for the last, I don't know anything about DOS, so that would require a level of expertise that I just don't have. I haven't seen any strange behaviour on the phone, and my memory size and usage has not freaked out, nor has my battery life. So what they are or what they are for is beyond me.
The 3 files are names thus:
??????
????Documents
oc????
Very odd.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Jerry,
My suggestions are only if the files reside on the SD card.
I believe the ? means the available fonts, on your phone, does not have the correct character set to display it properly.
Base on my belief above, try the following:
a) My apology being a new member, I am not allowed to post clickable link. Go to this link : add a http:// in front first
forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=5869460
b) Download and install the "Droid Sans Font.cab" to your phone in post #9. Alternatively, search for the file, arialuni.ttf, (Arial Unicode MS) first on your Windows PC if not then on the web and copy it to your phone, \Windows\Fonts directly. This is a 22Mb file !
c) Restart your phone and see if those files are showing proper characters.
d) If it does, then go ahead, open it and see what's the content like. Rename the file then delete. Uninstall the "Droid Sans Font.cab" if you wish. Personally, I don't like the font as the characters are rasterised.
Regards.
ugh, too much work. My phone isn't acting up, and even though I don't like uninvited strangers, they aren't eating up resources, and my phone is still functioning properly. I will keep these files you suggested handy in case something does start acting up, and see what happens.
yea, I am lazy when it comes to electronic stuff. Thanks for the info!
If you have SK Tools (or a similar app), try scanning the memory. It sounds like you have corrupted files or a corrupted directory. It may not be causing issues now, but it could cause issues sooner rather than later. You may also think about backing up everything now while you can.
JerryA said:
No, they aren't on the SD card, they are phone memory. Whenever I try to rename them, I get the same error code, telling me files cannot contain the following..... And as for the last, I don't know anything about DOS, so that would require a level of expertise that I just don't have. I haven't seen any strange behaviour on the phone, and my memory size and usage has not freaked out, nor has my battery life. So what they are or what they are for is beyond me.
The 3 files are names thus:
??????
????Documents
oc????
Very odd.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
oh no i have the same problem. but the strange files are on my storage card. i am backing up my storage card them i am going to format.
Vogue on Winmo 6.1
I keep(kept) helpful files in a folder I call(ed) "Device Memos".
It contains passwords, setup info, application guides, manuals, and other things to help me manage my device. It is mostly .txt, .doc., .pdf. and some saved web pages (.html).
The other day I thought I'd leave a memo in an audible format. I used Resco Recorder which saved it in a folder called "audio recordings". I then went into the folder and copied the mp3(hold stylus down, copy). Then, I went to "device memos" and pasted it(stylus down, paste).
As soon as I pasted I was taken to the root folder in Resco Explorer. Very strange I thought. I returned to "device memos" and ALL of my folders/files were missing...it was empty.
I searched the device but couldn't find them.
I've tried several restore programs such as Recuva, Easeus, Duplicate File Detective, and others without success.
Strangely, with the SD Card inserted in a reader I can double-click and find files and folders with strange gibberish for text. Right clicking on the folder for properties displays 116 files, 112 folders, and 215 Gigabytes on a 16GB Sandisk!
Can anyone explain what has happened and help me restore this data ?
Sorry to say this but it sounds like your file has been corrupted since the check sum is obviously bad. Your only hope is to find something that can reconstruct your file, and I don't know of any.
Edit: Then again I'm no developer, so maybe there is another explanation.
It's clear that filesystem on SD card got corrupted somehow.
There are many paid and free filesystem recovery/fixing utilities available on internet, starting with Windows built-in chkdsk. You have to mount your SD card on Window to use these.
For best results make a raw dump of your SD card first (using dd for Windows or search for something user-friendlier) - after unsuccessful recovery attempt, you can restore original SD contents and try another utility without messup made by previous one.
So I've used an app called File Hide Expert for a few years now on multiple devices. My S10e is the first one to give me troubles. I went to "unhide" (remove .nomedia files) on certain folders only to find my folders were empty. My first thought was that it wiped my files which bummed me out. But I was able to recover the thumbnail cache which helped for photos (yay low-res images). I still can't get to my videos or pdfs, which sucks because those were the important files. Anyway, I've been poking at the files for about 2 days now, and what I have found is that if I name a file the exact same name as one of my "deleted" files, it too vanishes, but a file under a new name stays. So I've come to the assumption that they are there, somewhere, just really really hidden. Possibly hid the .nomedia files with a .nomedia file?? Although when I plugged my SD card to my PC (Windows 10) and the folders showed up as empty, so I am kind of at a loss for what to do now. I've tried a slew of file explorers, data recovery apps, even considered rooting it briefly. I truly am at my wits end and need some help.
TL;DR: .nomedia files are gone along with other files, but directory still hides files under certain name.
I was about to post a question about this, but I just figured this out myself. My phone recently updated to Android 11. I have an SD-Card which has music on it - along with a lot of album art. Since the update, all these album art photos have been cluttering up my gallery. Every time I add a .nomedia file in here (which also was there before the update), it seems to get automatically deleted (no, not hidden). I tried copying a .nomedia file from elsewhere on the phone. I even tried popping out the SD-Card and adding the file via PC. As soon as Android touches it, it deletes the file again.
So, here is the issue. With Android 11, it is creating some default folders (I wish it wouldn't clutter up things with these empty folders that I never need or use). Those default folders include: Music, Pictures, Movies. These are created at the top level on the SD-Card and on internal storage. So, if you are also using one of those folders for something, it's going to auto delete the .nomedia file. In my case, I just moved my music into a Musics folder instead(and ensured it has a .nomedia file, of course.
Hopefully this will save someone else from wasting their time trying to figure out why this is happening!
pacaveli420 said:
I was about to post a question about this, but I just figured this out myself. My phone recently updated to Android 11. I have an SD-Card which has music on it - along with a lot of album art. Since the update, all these album art photos have been cluttering up my gallery. Every time I add a .nomedia file in here (which also was there before the update), it seems to get automatically deleted (no, not hidden). I tried copying a .nomedia file from elsewhere on the phone. I even tried popping out the SD-Card and adding the file via PC. As soon as Android touches it, it deletes the file again.
So, here is the issue. With Android 11, it is creating some default folders (I wish it wouldn't clutter up things with these empty folders that I never need or use). Those default folders include: Music, Pictures, Movies. These are created at the top level on the SD-Card and on internal storage. So, if you are also using one of those folders for something, it's going to auto delete the .nomedia file. In my case, I just moved my music into a Musics folder instead(and ensured it has a .nomedia file, of course.
Hopefully this will save someone else from wasting their time trying to figure out why this is happening!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This makes no sense, please explain in more detail.
android1977 said:
This makes no sense, please explain in more detail.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you're storing your music files in any of the default folders, Android is going to auto delete your .nomedia file if you try to put one there. Ergo, the solution is you need to store your music in a folder named something else.
pacaveli420 said:
If you're storing your music files in any of the default folders, Android is going to auto delete your .nomedia file if you try to put one there. Ergo, the solution is you need to store your music in a folder named something else.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks that's what I did and got lucky, I was so desperate I signed up to XDA just to comment I gotta say XDA I love your site and been reading for a couple year's now, enjoy the information provided, thanks guy's for all your hard work
pacaveli420 said:
If you're storing your music files in any of the default folders, Android is going to auto delete your .nomedia file if you try to put one there. Ergo, the solution is you need to store your music in a folder named something else.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for saving my media library! I've been tortured by this issue since using the new phone, finally!
hello, i just get Android 11 on my MI A3, and those folders ( music, pictures, movies )appears on my sd card, they are useless for me, is there a way to delete them?
before Android 11, i didn't have this problem because i choosed " use sd as external support " instead of "use sd as extended memory" when inserting the sd card, but now even if i make the same choice, the folders are there and i can't delete them.
Sort of off topic but not really:
How do I stop it from creating these default folders? It's extremely annoying. I don't have my SD card structured that way and never have. I've deleted the default music, movies, etc folders numerous times now as they just clutter up the root directory and they keep reappearing. Is there a solution to this?
This seems to be a part of Android 11s default folder structure which no one ever bothered to do something about. I wouldn't be surprised if it's there for "security reasons" as well as a communist one. As in you only have the option to use these "secure" folders or else it won't show up in your apps at all.
This might be a way for Google to slowly faze out SDCards entirely while only giving you the option to use said folders for your "private" stuff akin to how IOS (kinda) works. In other words, they are doing it on purpose and no one ever bothered to read the fine print.
Obviously private music and other media collections is the root (see what I did there) cause of the problem. They don't want you to have those at all, And want you to use streaming services instead (tinfoil hat). Which is probably what these folders will probably end up being used for.
Netflix and Spotify allow you to store music on your device, but it's encrypted and will probably end up there at some point in Androids lifecycle. Obviously these files don't need .nomedia since the files are encrypted and will only show up in said app either way which makes the above meaningless.
Most of this is speculation obviously, but we've slowly been moving towards this trend if you look at how System apps were split into app and priv-app and so on. At some point in time only certain apps that has had the blessing of Google will be allowed to read anything off your storage. This happened with Chrome not to long ago where they blocked side-loaded extensions from running.
You will slowly see Android turning into IOS because they (Google) and big-tech in general wants 100% control of what you can and can't do. And everything based on AOSP or LOS is gonna follow suit because no one gives a flying fudge because that's too bothersome. The fragmentation of custom builds based on LOS/AOSP in general already shows that this has always been the case for the last 10 years. Linux in general is no different either as can be seen with wokeism. Except that was through decimation via woke people and not big-tech.
I was going crazy thinking this issue was specific to my samsung's stock rom. I started searching about this once I noticed it on LOS 18. Glad I'm not alone
I tend to be a little OCD about my folder structures but at this point I don't mind making a separate folder to avoid album arts in my gallery.
I believe I found a solution to this. It's been about a week or two with no further incident now. My solution was to delete the default folders from the root of the SD card because I don't use them, then create blank files that used those names. Haven't had a problem since.
I use the top level pictures folder because of a compatibility issue with programs that have small file path character limits that cause the program to hang. I don't use them anymore but I haven't had a reason to move it back where I had it previously and that would only make the default folder issue worse if I did. Or at least it would have until now with this discovery.
I do not use the movies and music folders, and if I move my pictures folder back where I had it I won't use that one either. Having them pop up on their own to clutter my root directory on both my SD card and my phone itself was very annoying. After deleting the movies and music folders off of the root of my SD card for the billionth time and getting rid of the empty default folders on my phone again, I created two blank files on my SD card root called Music and Movies. Ever since then the default folders haven't reappeared. On top of that, it hasn't created any ".thumbnails" folders all over the place like it always used to do either. That includes doing so on the internal phone storage. Creating those files on the SD card seems to have broken the whole process. I imagine the same would work vice versa for OP since it sounds like they use those default folders. Find an empty default folder on internal storage, delete it, create a file and name it the name of the folder you deleted (case sensitive), and that should disable the annoying default folder management process too. I can't vouch for that method, but I can vouch for it working when you do so on the SD card.
I just noticed this today on my tab s7+.
From what I can tell, the .nomedia file nolonger does anything on its own. However, if I add the .nomedia file to a folder, then rename the folder placing a . in front, of course it hides the entire folder. When I rename the folder again, removing the ., the .nomedia file now works. No matter how many times I rename the folder, the gallery does not see it until I remove the .nomedia file.
pool_shark said:
I just noticed this today on my tab s7+.
From what I can tell, the .nomedia file nolonger does anything on its own. However, if I add the .nomedia file to a folder, then rename the folder placing a . in front, of course it hides the entire folder. When I rename the folder again, removing the ., the .nomedia file now works. No matter how many times I rename the folder, the gallery does not see it until I remove the .nomedia file.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thank you pool shark.. i tried what you did/suggested and it worked. thanks.