Re: time to delete

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"Questor" <Questor@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:ONgMqbfjJHA.1408@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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"Gene E. Bloch" <not-me@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:hg9zqx7gc6hs$.17vtlxtx2ot9d$.dlg@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Thu, 12 Feb 2009 16:50:27 -0600, Cody Jarrett wrote:

On Thu, 12 Feb 2009 14:22:51 -0800, "Charles W Davis"
<newsgroup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I have previously posted regarding the large volume of bits and pieces that
are under my (user) folder on the drive. 89,000 plus. All of this came about
by trying to restore from a backup created from a Windows Vista Ultimate
computer. My new one, at present is Windows Vista Home Premium.

I finally figured how to sort the files by file type (not set up that way as
in XP). When I set about to delete a thousand or so, it never seems to
complete.

Is there a way to speed this operation up? I have now spent 5 hours at it.

<sigh>

Have you tried deleting files in smaller batches yet?

You've spent enough time here seeking help that if you did it one at a
time you'd be half done by now.

Also, if he's trying to delete to the Recycle Bin, he may be filling it,
which should have some bad effect, I would think :-)

OP: try holding down the shift key while pressing the delete key; this
makes it a permanent deletion (caution: you can't restore files that were
deleted this way).

--
Gene E. Bloch letters0x40blochg0x2Ecom

This is one view after 10 minutes of attempting to move: http://www.anthemwebs.com/images/prepare.jpg

All items have a read only attribute in properties. When I manually change one, I can then delete it! Tens of thousands?????

Try opening a command window (Start -> Run: CMD and an Enter key)

Navigate to the offending folder(s) and enter this command:

ATTRIB -r *.*

This will remove the read-only attribute for ALL files in the folder.

Then, try to delete them en-masse.

Questor

Questor,

After running the command that you suggested, it is allowing me to delete up to 10, not 10 but only 9. I can also move those that I would like to retain up to 10. I am now down to only 46,559 files to go.

I feel would have been better off restoring to original and upgrading to Ultimate then restoring from the backup.


How big are these 9 or 10 files? If they are very large files, then perhaps the OS itself is limiting the amount that you can mass-delete because the recycle bin has a finite amount of space.

However, if you follow the ATTRIB command with a simple DEL *.* command, that should let you delete as many as you want. If you temporarily set the recycle bin to "do not move files to the recycle bin. Remove files immediately when deleted" that should even eliminate having to empty the bin periodically. To do this, right-click on the Recycle Bin icon and select that radio button and OK your way out.

Questor
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