[grooveless touque]

OK, this is the most bizarre situation I have EVER encountered with a computer. I swear this is true.

I downloaded a dozen blues box sets (cos I don't have $1000 to blow) and when I went to play the songs I found only about 5% of the songs were really "there". Let me explain. This one box set, for instance, was supposed to be 798 megs, but when I clicked on "folder properties," it said it was only 76 megs. And only 15 of the 129 songs will play. The rest say "header error" or something. So I listened to the 15 songs that I was able to play, and deleted them.

So then I tried to delete the whole folder, and it couldn't be deleted. Apparently whatever "header" problem wouldn't allow the songs to play also wouldn't allow them to be "found" and deleted. This pissed me off. Even though the folder technically said "empty", I knew I had downloaded 798 megs of stuff, and that was now taking up space on my hard drive. So I moved the folder out of My Music to a folder I never use so I wouldn't have to see, and therefore think about, the problematic box set. I then discovered all of the other 11 box sets had the same problem. So technically there were 12 folders totalling 3.8 gigs that I could not delete, and which all claimed to be empty.

BUT WAIT! Suddenly I was surprised to discover that when I moved the folders to the out-of-sight, out-of-mind folder, another 5% of the songs became available for playing and deleting. So I listened to and deleted the ones I could. I tried it again by moving all the folders to another folder, and another dozen songs became available again.

So this has had me confused as hell. The other day I downloaded a movie that took up almost all of the 6 gigs available on my hard drive. The real mystery here is, I should only have 4.5 gigs available considering those "phantom" songs take up that much. But since the folder claims to be empty, my computer thinks it is, and therefore allocates the space they take up on my HD for other purposes. After I downloaded that movie, I technically had 34 gigs of stuff on my 32 gig hard drive.

So I have been moving the folders, listening to and deleting what becomes available time after time after time. After two weeks I have gotten through about two-thirds of the songs. And every time I move the folders to a new folder, a few more songs become available. WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?! How the hell is this possible?! THIS IS BULLSHIT! Either the songs are on my HD or they're not! Either they're playable or they're not...right? Apparently not.

So, all that to say, my question for the technophiles is: what the fuck?

[mrlayance]

The RIAA will be stopping by your place tomorrow, please say "Hey" for me.

[MountainHip]

Drugs are bad...mmmkay

[lord brazle]

Okay, for starters,
1) Did you download these from some Time-Life site or use some P2P program?

2) Are you sure you downloaded them? :wink:

3.a) What do you use to listen to music?
3.b) What are the file-extensions?
3.c) As you deleted some of them more suddenly appeared in the folder?

4.a) Is your CD-ROM spewing green-pea soup?
4.b) Did the little Jesus figure on top of your monitor melt?

5) Dude? The blues? Right on, man. 8)

6) And what movie did you download?

7) In your explorer/file-manager go to "Tools" and "Folder Options" and click on the tab for "View" and click the "Show Hidden Files And Folders" option then view the folder where they supposedly are; maybe if you downloaded them the demons made them invisible to bug you. They can be quite mischeivous.

[grooveless touque]

Okay, for starters,
1) Did you download these from some Time-Life site or use some P2P program? Downloaded them from Suprnova. Yes, yes, may the heavens rain fire on me, but I did. Nobody can convince me I should have bought them, because a) they're insanely expensive if you can even find a place that sells them and b) I don't like most of what I hear on box sets anyway. I downloaded them for the 20% of the songs I ended up liking. If there were some way to do that ethically, I would, but there ain't, so I don't.

3.a) What do you use to listen to music? DAMN TELEMARKETERS!! LEAVE ME ALONE!! I'M EATING!!
...but seriously...I've tried Musicmatch, Real Player and Windows media player. I've also tried opening them in Cool Edit Pro, and it won't read them either.

3.b) What are the file-extensions? all MP3

3.c) As you deleted some of them more suddenly appeared in the folder? No, when I deleted the available songs, the folder claimed to be empty. I also could not cut and paste the songs into another folder. So when I move the entire folder containing the songs into another main folder, more songs suddenly appeared.

4.b) Did the little Jesus figure on top of your monitor melt? No, but there's this little voice coming out of it now that says "The power of Christ compels you!"

5) Dude? The blues? Right on, man. I hear that! :thumb:

6) And what movie did you download? About Schmidt, which ***I ALREADY PAID FOR ON DVD*** but I want a copy to watch at work in a computer with no DVD player.

7) In your explorer/file-manager go to "Tools" and "Folder Options" and click on the tab for "View" and click the "Show Hidden Files And Folders" option then view the folder where they supposedly are; maybe if you downloaded them the demons made them invisible to bug you. They can be quite mischeivous. > That is a very good tip. I will try it. However I doubt anybody "planted" these problems to punish me for downloading. The user who shared them has shared thousands of things, looking at his history. I downloaded an album, and there were no problems. It just seems to be these box sets that have the problem.

[lord brazle]

Okay, okay, okay (in my best Joe Pesci) ... don't worry about the fact that you downloaded them. I'm not one to judge, I spend about half my life downloading one-hit wonders and songs by artist that I wouldn't dare buy an album by in a record-store. So I didn't mean the question like that. If you did get them from a site I was going to say look up the site in Yahoo or Google and see if anybody else had a similar problem. But I take it Suprnova is a torrent thing... <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.suprnova.org/">http://www.suprnova.org/</a><!-- m --> I never heard of it before today.

Okay, now that we're this far you can do several things to remedy your digital-demons;

1) Open whatever song file wouldn't work in Windows Media Player (or another program) and then remember whatever error message it said (i.e. like the classic "Operation Timed Out - Error #10060) and type it in Yahoo and find it elsewhere. Sometimes you can do this although not all the time, but generally someone out there had the same error, asked about it on a forum and some tech-savvy pimp gave him the 411 on it. That is if you're getting an error message at all. You might not be.

Here's a list of WMP Error Codes... <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/9series/player/playererrors.aspx">http://www.microsoft.com/windows/window ... rrors.aspx</a><!-- m -->

2) Or if you don't give a shit about the songs anymore and just want them gone, you can just go into DOS and see if you can actually see the files listed in there and delete them that way. Windows is basically on a campaign to get rid of DOS or something, you can't even get to the prompt anymore when you start up windows and press f5.... *sigh* I used to love DOS... but it's no longer '94.... how time flies...

You can get a patch somewhere online (if I can find it) that you install and when you restart the computer, you can get the DOS prompt at the beginning, although to get to Windows you might have to type in "C:/windows" ENTER then "win" everytime.... I don't know how to get rid of the patch once you install it... there's probably a way. Okay found it, my good man Pedro will hook ya up with the good shit... <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.geocities.com/dos8me/">http://www.geocities.com/dos8me/</a><!-- m --> that's if ya want to go that route...

3) You could need some codecs, some updated (or downdated, lol) software like DirectX or something weird and funky for those specific files. I take it the other mp3s on your computer do in fact work so it is probably not a computer-wide program and is just relegated to these specific blues files. You can maybe try opening them in some audio production program from downloads.com - something quick and free - (with the option to save still there of course) and try to open them and save them as WAV or maybe even just open them and re-save them without changing them at all as mp3s again and see if they work. I got a feeling that this won't do it though but it's worth a shot. I know some record label bigwig suit dudes will share songs that all of a sudden screech mid-song and scare the fucking shit out of ya... but I doubt this is the problem either.

4) It might be some sort of permission thing in ID3 tag thingy. You remove them or something. I'm not big on Windows Media Player, nor was I ever (nor will I ever be), but it might have something do with that. Maybe someone on here can go into depth about that metadata shit. lol. I guess you can't play some mp3s unless they're removed and what-not.

Other than this stuff, I don't know what to tell you...

Now I got some porn to get to.

And some bacon and eggs... :jump

[The_Dark_Canuck]

It's cause you're a Sens fan