Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with WindowsXP and vista

What's up with my music files on my PC?

ishotjr — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 17:12:02 -0800

What is up with my music files' titles turning into nonsensical four-letter titles? Ok, this is a little long, but it's a weird problem that is hard to describe.

I use iTunes on a (Dell) Windows Vista PC laptop. I noticed this issue probably over a year ago, but was too lazy to do anything about it until now.

Thousands of my music files are in files within "C:\My Music" that are named with F and then a number, F00 thru F49. All of my music was originally in "C:\Users\ishotjr\Music\iTunes\iTunes Music," and some of it still is. Within the F-named folders, the files are named/songs titled in three different ways.
1) Most are with four letters in caps, example: AJOM. They are seemingly random and not acronyms of the real titles. Within this, most, in the artist/album, etc. fields in Windows Explorer, have the correct info. A few have nothing at all in those.
In either case, if I choose to play it in iTunes (by clicking the option within Windows Explorer, where I'm viewing the files), it brings me to the song that is properly titled within iTunes (i.e., AJOM takes me to "Levitate Me" by The Pixies in iTunes).
2) A few of the songs are named with their correct name, but with the track number proceeding it (i.e. 01 Debaser)
3) Even fewer are named completely normally, with just the actual song title.

Another weird twist is that in iTunes itself, there are a handful of files that are actually named with the four letter names. Most of these are all from a Velvet Underground greatest hits compilation, but there are a few that aren't.

There seems to be no pattern as to how I procured the music and what's in these weird files. I did bring most of the music onto my computer from my iPod when I got the computer, but some of it I have purchased since owning this computer. The software I used to bring the songs from the iPod to the computer was some free program that I don't recall the name of and deleted to save hard drive space when I was done using it.

The real kicker is that most of these weirdly-named tracks are NOT duplicates, so I can't just delete them. Most of the time, it's one or two songs from a given album that are named weird and in the F-named folder instead of in the folder with the rest of its album-mates.

It seems that I might be stuck consolidating the 49 "F" folders into one (not so hard, just tedious), then trying to rename the thousands of song backs to their proper names by clicking them through to iTunes and manually entering the name of each song into the file name in Windows, then moving all of the songs to the correct place. It's not necessary to do this to be able to listen to the songs, but it's annoying having my files all over the place, especially when I want to delete entire albums off of my hard drive to make space.

My actual question is two-part:
1) Has anyone ever had this weirdo thing happen to their music files before?
2) Does anyone know a better way to fix it than to do everything manually (which will take for-ev-er)?

One version of Windows isn't enough, I need three!

Snyder — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 02:27:12 -0800

Will Windows 98 and XP run and dual boot (or, treble boot, I suppose,) with my new Vista running computer? I'm being given a slightly used computer that is currently is running Vista, but I'd like to bring over my hard drives from my current computer. Right now, I have two hard disks, one with Windows 98 and one with XP, and I have a dual boot setup. The computer I want to move them two is a Dell Inspiron 531S, an ACPIx86-based machine, with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+ 2009 Mhz, 958 Megs RAM, and the BIOS is Dell Inc, 1.0.3 6/15/2007. This is all I can easily find out at the moment, since I didn't buy the computer originally and I'm not used to Vista.

To be brief, can I run a triple boot system with Vista, Win98 and XP with this hardware? My idea is to have the backwards compatibility of 98 with the robustness of XP, while Vista gets itself sorted out. Any adivce in that direction too would be appreciated. Thanks for the help.

How can I turn my old Windows XP desktop into a print server for a wired network with Vista and XP machines?

abkadefgee — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 14:07:01 -0800

How can I turn my old Windows XP desktop into a print server for a wired network with Vista and XP machines? I've tried plugging in an old machine, installing two USB printers, and sharing the printers, but the other machines on the network can't seem to connect. I'm running everything through an old Linksys router. Even with the firewall down on the machines, I still can't seem to connect. Are there compatibility issues with XP print sharing with Vista and should I just install some flavor of linux? And if so, how should I do that? I really appreciate your help!

How do I rename a file to user input and then FTP it, all from a batch file?

Ky — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:58:32 -0800

I want to create a batch file compatible with Windows XP and Vista that will do the following: 1) Get user input (name) 2) Rename an existing file to the input name string 3) Upload the renamed file to an anonymous FTP server that takes neither username nor password (no prompting) I don't know what the differences are between XP and Vista in terms of command line--I did read somewhere that Vista reintroduced CHOICE, but I don't want to use that if XP users don't have it. Would /p still work? I'm completely stuck on how to get the input string into a new filename.

For the FTP part, I would like the batch file to show that it's being uploaded and to wait, or something to that effect.

(Do both OSes have the same ftp.exe? But I don't know if users will have it on their systems, and it may be better to find a free command line FTP app that can upload to an anonymous FTP server without username/password. Suggestions?)

Sorry if you think there are obvious answers elsewhere, but my Google-fu isn't helping much. Thanks in advance!

I've got a HDMI problem with my new HTPC

PeterMcDermott — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 17:25:46 -0800

I recently built a new HTPC using a Gigabyte GA-G33-2SH motherboard. The motherboard is built on the Intel G33 chipset, and has dual onboard video -- a VGA output, and a DVI or a HDMI output. (You can use the VGA and one of the digital outputs simultaneously, but not the two digital outputs.) When I boot the machine, I get video through both the HDMI output and the VGA output. However, as soon as I reach the Windows login screen, HDMI output dies on me. I'm using all the latest drivers, I've updated my bios and I've tried every combination of everything. Curiously, if I boot from a keydrive with BartPE on it, I get video all the way down. One would therefore assume that this has something to do with the Intel drivers, but other people seem to have reasonable success with the same drivers. It seems peculiar that it works without the hardware specific drivers, and breaks with them installed.

I've got both XP pro and Vista Media Center installed on this machine. Same problem in both operating system, old drivers and new.

Does anyone have any thoughts? This is driving me nuts.

Will Vista-Native drivers work in XP Pro? Y/N

SlyBevel — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 10:52:52 -0800

I have a client system that has Vista preinstalled. The client wants XP Pro on the system. It's a laptop, and the manufacturer (HP) only provides Vista drivers. Will the Vista drivers work in Windows XP? Is there a hardware-equivalent HP system that is the Windows XP version that I can get drivers for to use on this one? It's an HP DV6235NR. Thanks!