Database Info

games into games folder

hi there i've installed some games onto my HD2 (uno, FM, tonyhawks) and want to locate them in the games folder not in the main windows area. can anyone help me do this?

open file explorer. browse to windows/startmenu/programs.....look for ur games shortcuts......cut..... nd paste in windows/startmenu/programs/games. done

You're not done at all.
OK, it will move the shortcut to the correct folder, but the icon won't follow. It's defined in the registry ([HKLM\Security\Shell\Startinfo\Start] then the folder name, then the shortcut name, string value "Icon").
People making CABs should be a bit less lousy and direct shortcuts to the correct folder, same for the acompanying icon.
Actually, some people put icon definitions into several registry keys, so they will "follow" the shortcut if you move it. It's actually a satisfying alternative, if you consider it gives the user the ability to put the shortcut wherever he wants (including copying it to several locations) without losing the icon.
But yes, having shortcuts piling up into the Start Menu's first level, or even worse, placing them into dummy folders with a fixed name (sometimes in a foreign language), is pig work, and I saw even worse (yes, it's possible !) : shortcuts landing to a foreign language "Programs" or even "Start menu" folder, so actually not even displaying in the Start Menu !
When you create (or modify) a CAB file, you should heavily use aliases in order to let Windows Mobile translate them to the actual names during installation.
For instance, if you wanted to direct a shortcut to the "Games" folder, whatever its actual name in your own language is, you should NOT put it into "\Windows\StartMenu\Programs\Games" (neither into "%StartMenu_Programs%\Games", though it's still better like that), but you should actually use "%StartMenu_Programs_Games%", which will put the shortcut in the exact correct location.
You can do the same for the program's location itself. For instance, %ProgramFiles_Games% will direct it to the correct folder, according to your system's language, and will even do so, either you choose to install it on the internal memory, or on the SD card.
You can use these aliases inside registry values, too.
Unfortunately, this process may sometimes do it "too much".
It's the case on cooked ROMs, where the author may retain WWE names for some folders and translate others, sometimes using his own syntax. Since the CAB will always translate using the official way, it may still land in an incorrect location...
The ony way to be sure you'll obtain the wanted result, anyway, is to get some CAB editor program and peek inside before copying them to the pocket PC and installing them... And maybe, fix them before using them.
It will be handy each time you'll need to reinstal it, so don't mind inspecting and fixing the CABs you find : it's always better than crashing your system because something wrong or inadequate to your setup was put inside.
One classic case is TouchFlo / Sense tabs, for instance.
Unfortunately, they're all defined inside a unique XML Manila file, so you actually can't just ADD a tab : in fact, this notion does not even exist ; all you can do is overwrite your whole tabs list with another complete one, and pray that you'll end up with the same list, plus the new one... Would you bet your life on that ? I won't.
In real life, you really can NEVER trust a CAB intended to add a tab to your existing setup, as the author most probably don't have the same tabs as you have. In the best case, you'll just loose some tabs (they'll just disappear, even in the tabs list from the settings, and you won't get them back) : the programs and files are still there, but their definition file will have been replaced by the new one. And in the worst case, it will add a definition for a tab whose programs and files are not previously installed on your phone - and you'll crash it once and for all.
That's the reason why now, I never give a tab CAB containing any tabs definitions. I only provide all but the tabs list, and provide separate CABs for all the possible tabs combinations - and you have to choose and use the good one. Or use Maltwater's SenseUtil program to setup your tabs. The good news is my method will setup all the tabs in perfect order as soon as you've soft resetted the device, since my CABs contain the XML file, plus all the registry keys, plus it resets ManiFull.xml.
So, people, whatever I said about good CABs putting the shortcuts where they should... OK, you may be lucky... But the right behaviour should always be to look inside CABs before trying them. You can trust me !

i'm new coming nice to know all

russeini said:
open file explorer. browse to windows/startmenu/programs.....look for ur games shortcuts......cut..... nd paste in windows/startmenu/programs/games. done
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's been a while since I had the need to move icons, so there may be newer versions of this program, but the JWMDIconChanger will move the icons for you.

[Q] What's on my SD Card?

I was flicking through Root Browser on my SD Card today and I noticed some things that I have no idea what they are. In the past, I deleted them and it messed with my gallery or with other kinds of stuff.
The specific names of the folders are as follows:
burstlyImageCache
LazyList
LOST.DIR
Mikulu
myrecord
.wiyun
.udstate
.config_c38
What are these? what happens if I delete them? I'm not overly concerned, I'm just curious.

Chrisruns said:
I was flicking through Root Browser on my SD Card today and I noticed some things that I have no idea what they are. In the past, I deleted them and it messed with my gallery or with other kinds of stuff.
The specific names of the folders are as follows:
burstlyImageCache
LazyList
LOST.DIR
Mikulu
myrecord
.wiyun
.udstate
.config_c38
What are these? what happens if I delete them? I'm not overly concerned, I'm just curious.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
generally if you do not know what something is, don't delete it. I think the image cache thing has to do with the camera, and anything with a dot in front of it is a system file, so leave those alone.

Delete it if its unuseful!
generally if you do not know what something is, don't delete it. I think the image cache thing has to do with the camera, and anything with a dot in front of it is a system file, so leave those alone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't agree!!!
Apps often let unused files in various folders, saturating the memory of the SD Card.
If u don't know what its for, ask (or ask google )
For exemple, wiyun is a chinese game editor. Hence .wiyun is its trash directory. If you don't have any games left from this editor, you can safely delete the folder.
Mikulu folder is probably from Mikulu music player ...
etc.

Directories myrecord & myalbum
Directories myrecord & myalbum are created by the
"Easy Downloader" app and by the "Pro" variant also.
Creating empty files with equal names prevents directory
creation. But uninstalling is the only way to avoid this completely.
Best regards
P.S. I assume that other "Easy ..." apps by the 2Easy Team
developer will create them because of the in app promotion
content.

SketchBook/Gallery File Location Confusion

Last night, I was looking through my Gallery and saw a few things I'd drawn in SketchBook Pro. Not everything I'd drawn in SK was there, but some were. I figured they were copies or thumbnails or something and, because I like to keep my file systems clean, I deleted them from the Gallery.
Well, turns out they weren't copies or thumbnails, but MY DRAWINGS! Ugh!
So my question is, is there anything comparable to a recycle bin on this thing, where my drawings might still exist? A second question is, does the Gallery just gather all the image-type files and display them, no matter where they are?
Thanks in advance!

loribuono said:
Last night, I was looking through my Gallery and saw a few things I'd drawn in SketchBook Pro. Not everything I'd drawn in SK was there, but some were. I figured they were copies or thumbnails or something and, because I like to keep my file systems clean, I deleted them from the Gallery.
Well, turns out they weren't copies or thumbnails, but MY DRAWINGS! Ugh!
So my question is, is there anything comparable to a recycle bin on this thing, where my drawings might still exist? A second question is, does the Gallery just gather all the image-type files and display them, no matter where they are?
Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Gallery does display all images on your tablet unless they are in a hidden folder. If you have images you do not want to be seen in Gallery you can rename the folder they are in by placing a . in front of the folder name. This will make Gallery see the folder as hidden and not access it. However this may also cause some other problems. Example I have a bunch of epub books with cover images with them and I did not want to have all those images showing in Gallery (there are a lot of them) so I made the folder hidden and it worked for Gallery, but I read the books in Cool Reader and all the sudden Cool Reader could not find the books either. I worked around this by creating special folder for my book I am currently reading.

create a .nomedia file and place it in the folder. it'll keep some apps from scanning the folders.

MTP / Media Storage issues –*need to deactivate indexing for one directory

Hi all,
I have a quite special issue. I hope someone here can help me or point me into the right direction.
Huawei P9 with Android 6.0, rooted.
For my purposes (*) I use a MicroSD card with 128MB capacity that contains a lot of small files (abt. 1.5 million files).
I wondered for weeks, why the phone becomes incredibly slow and hangs from time to time.
I learned that the Media Storage service could be responsible, because it tries to index all files and that can take a very long time if there are lots of files.
I deactivated Media Storage (using Titanium Backup) and BINGO! My phone is like new. Snappy, well usable.
Since I don't need MTP access to the phone, I thought it might be good now.
HOWEVER:
I just found out that ring tones don't work anymore, neither for phone ringing, nor for the alarm clock etc.
It seems that those apps also rely on the file index, that's gone now.
Without any ring or alarm tone, the phone is almost unusable again.
Do you know of any way to make the MTP / Mediastorage server ignore one directory when indexing? That would help, as I could simply let it ignore the directory on SD card that contains those 1.5 million files.
Or can you think of any other good solution for my problem?
Thank you so much!
Daniel
(*) to explain my usecase, why I need so many files on SD: I am a photographer, doing gigapixel panorama photography. For presenting my work to customers, I put my demo panoramic tours onto the SD card. These are HTML files with a data directory containing JPG tiles of the gigapixel panoramas. One panorama image consist of up to a few 100.000 files. A webserver running on the phone makes the panorama tours accessible to onboard browsers or, via WiFi hotspot, to other devices in the surrounding, e.g. a PC or tablet of the customer.
I considered solutions like an external storage (USB OTG) connected to the phone only when I present that stuff to the customer, or an entirely separate device (Pandora / Dragonbox Pyra or so) to host and serve the panorama tours, but I like to carry only one device, the small smart phone, to do it all. An extenal OSB OTG storage solution would almost fit my needs. But.. only almost, because a small storage is something that can get lost or stolen easily and that needs additional handling and provides additional points of failure, which I don't want to have in front of the customer.
Android is capable of doing it all, and my philosophy is, that a computer needs to adapt to my way of work than vice versa. This was the intention when Neumann and Zuse invented programmable computers. And I don't really want to eat humble pie here.

daniel908 said:
Hi all,
I have a quite special issue. I hope someone here can help me or point me into the right direction.
Huawei P9 with Android 6.0, rooted.
For my purposes (*) I use a MicroSD card with 128MB capacity that contains a lot of small files (abt. 1.5 million files).
I wondered for weeks, why the phone becomes incredibly slow and hangs from time to time.
I learned that the Media Storage service could be responsible, because it tries to index all files and that can take a very long time if there are lots of files.
I deactivated Media Storage (using Titanium Backup) and BINGO! My phone is like new. Snappy, well usable.
Since I don't need MTP access to the phone, I thought it might be good now.
HOWEVER:
I just found out that ring tones don't work anymore, neither for phone ringing, nor for the alarm clock etc.
It seems that those apps also rely on the file index, that's gone now.
Without any ring or alarm tone, the phone is almost unusable again.
Do you know of any way to make the MTP / Mediastorage server ignore one directory when indexing? That would help, as I could simply let it ignore the directory on SD card that contains those 1.5 million files.
Or can you think of any other good solution for my problem?
Thank you so much!
Daniel
(*) to explain my usecase, why I need so many files on SD: I am a photographer, doing gigapixel panorama photography. For presenting my work to customers, I put my demo panoramic tours onto the SD card. These are HTML files with a data directory containing JPG tiles of the gigapixel panoramas. One panorama image consist of up to a few 100.000 files. A webserver running on the phone makes the panorama tours accessible to onboard browsers or, via WiFi hotspot, to other devices in the surrounding, e.g. a PC or tablet of the customer.
I considered solutions like an external storage (USB OTG) connected to the phone only when I present that stuff to the customer, or an entirely separate device (Pandora / Dragonbox Pyra or so) to host and serve the panorama tours, but I like to carry only one device, the small smart phone, to do it all. An extenal OSB OTG storage solution would almost fit my needs. But.. only almost, because a small storage is something that can get lost or stolen easily and that needs additional handling and provides additional points of failure, which I don't want to have in front of the customer.
Android is capable of doing it all, and my philosophy is, that a computer needs to adapt to my way of work than vice versa. This was the intention when Neumann and Zuse invented programmable computers. And I don't really want to eat humble pie here.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There's an Xposed module that can do exactly what you're asking. But I'm not sure how nicely the xposed framework will work with your Huawei device (assuming you're still stock). You can check it out if you feel its worth any hassle that might be involved. Here's the link to the forum and a screenshot of the app's description & capabilities
https://forum.xda-developers.com/xposed/modules/xposed-xposed-media-scanner-optimizer-t2942609

GREAT! THANKS!
I didn't know that an XPosed module existed that could solve that problem.
An attempt to install XPosed a few months ago has failed.
But I retried today with the Wanam build (official one failed back then) and it worked well. Downloaded this module now and will see how it works.
Thank you so much!

Quick question:
The manual for the Media Scanner Optimizer module says
"Directories: If checked the media scanner will only scan directories that have a .scanMedia file (i.e. an empty file with a dot as first part of the name similar to the .noMedia file). Use a file explorer app to create this file. This file can be placed in a directory that may contain subdirectories. The subdirectories will be scanned as well. If unchecked all directories will be scanned (except for the ones containing a .noMedia file - this default behavior of the media scanner is not altered by the Xposed Media Scanner Optimizer)."
(source: http://repo.xposed.info/module/com.thomashofmann.xposed.mediascanneroptimizer)
Does that mean, in my case I coud simply have placed a .noMedia file in the directory with the millions of files and my problem would have been solved, even without XPosed?
Somewhere I read that the media storage service does NOT care about the .noMedia files, so I refused experimenting with this quite early in my research phase.
Do you have experiences, if this really works or not?

daniel908 said:
Quick question:
The manual for the Media Scanner Optimizer module says
"Directories: If checked the media scanner will only scan directories that have a .scanMedia file (i.e. an empty file with a dot as first part of the name similar to the .noMedia file). Use a file explorer app to create this file. This file can be placed in a directory that may contain subdirectories. The subdirectories will be scanned as well. If unchecked all directories will be scanned (except for the ones containing a .noMedia file - this default behavior of the media scanner is not altered by the Xposed Media Scanner Optimizer)."
(source: http://repo.xposed.info/module/com.thomashofmann.xposed.mediascanneroptimizer)
Does that mean, in my case I coud simply have placed a .noMedia file in the directory with the millions of files and my problem would have been solved, even without XPosed?
Somewhere I read that the media storage service does NOT care about the .noMedia files, so I refused experimenting with this quite early in my research phase.
Do you have experiences, if this really works or not?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I initially thought about the .nomedia alternative. But I wasn't clear on if the 1.5 million files you have were actually media files. If they are then creating a .nomedia file should do the trick. If not, then you have the Xposed module
I personally have a few .nomedia files here and there on my SD card. And it does what its supposed to, ie; stops any media file that's present in those folders from showing up in the Gallery/music player.
So I guess its safe to assume that they weren't indexed either

Freewander10 said:
I initially thought about the .nomedia alternative. But I wasn't clear on if the 1.5 million files you have were actually media files. If they are then creating a .nomedia file should do the trick. If not, then you have the Xposed module
I personally have a few .nomedia files here and there on my SD card. And it does what its supposed to, ie; stops any media file that's present in those folders from showing up in the Gallery/music player.
So I guess its safe to assume that they weren't indexed either
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I thought the .nomedia trick would only work, if the Xposed module was there?
Or does it work by default, even on a non-rooted stock ROM?
Thise mana files that I have are almost all JPG files. There are a few .js and .xml files, too, that control how the .jpgs are rendered on the client's browser, also some video files that are embedded into the virtual tours, but about 99.5% of the files are .jpg.

daniel908 said:
I thought the .nomedia trick would only work, if the Xposed module was there?
Or does it work by default, even on a non-rooted stock ROM?
Thise mana files that I have are almost all JPG files. There are a few .js and .xml files, too, that control how the .jpgs are rendered on the client's browser, also some video files that are embedded into the virtual tours, but about 99.5% of the files are .jpg.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It doesn't matter what type of files you have. If the folder has a .nomedia file, it will not be scanned for anything.
This is standard android behavior, and does not require xposed to be installed.

Android 11 and .nomedia file

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!
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Click to collapse
This makes no sense, please explain in more detail.

android1977 said:
This makes no sense, please explain in more detail.
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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.
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Click to collapse
thank you pool shark.. i tried what you did/suggested and it worked. thanks.