Batch delete for .MTA files

[Ed Cryer]

I installed Samsung Allshare and then uninstalled it, but it's left a
vast number of .MTA files scattered all over the place. They're
thumbnails it created; and there's one for every video file, hundreds.

I need a batch delete command that will get rid of the lot, including
those in hidden folders and external drives.

Any suggestions?

Ed

 

[Nil]

I installed Samsung Allshare and then uninstalled it, but it's
left a vast number of .MTA files scattered all over the place.
They're thumbnails it created; and there's one for every video
file, hundreds.

I need a batch delete command that will get rid of the lot,
including those in hidden folders and external drives.

Any suggestions?

If you were going go the batch file route, you'd have to write one that
traverses the entire file system on all available disks. You would
probably run into problems with permissions in certain locations that
might make the batch file stop. IMO the testing and tweaking of the
batch file wouldn't be worth it for this one-time operation.

I think it would be better to use a search program to find them all,
then you can eyeball the list to make sure it's not catching anything
you don't intend, and then you can consign them all to the recycle bin.
Unfortunately, Windows 7's built in search makes some very
unintelligent assumptions about where and what it should search for,
and it's difficult to persuade it to act otherwise. That's why I use
Everything Search (http://www.voidtools.com/). It's free and simple,
and once you let it build its index of files, it's super fast at
finding things. I'd let it search for *.mta, select them all, and hit
Delete.

 

[Paul]

If you were going go the batch file route, you'd have to write one that
traverses the entire file system on all available disks. You would
probably run into problems with permissions in certain locations that
might make the batch file stop. IMO the testing and tweaking of the
batch file wouldn't be worth it for this one-time operation.

I think it would be better to use a search program to find them all,
then you can eyeball the list to make sure it's not catching anything
you don't intend, and then you can consign them all to the recycle bin.
Unfortunately, Windows 7's built in search makes some very
unintelligent assumptions about where and what it should search for,
and it's difficult to persuade it to act otherwise. That's why I use
Everything Search (http://www.voidtools.com/). It's free and simple,
and once you let it build its index of files, it's super fast at
finding things. I'd let it search for *.mta, select them all, and hit
Delete.

Could you use the search syntax extensions, to make the Windows search
more precise ?

This is an older reference, but I see one example you could try.

http://web.archive.org/web/20100213...esktopsearch/technicalresources/advquery.mspx

ext:.MTA

Try that in the search box.

If it doesn't work, look for a Windows 7 article with search syntax info.
I had another web page (somewhere), that had those extensions listed
as well. The above link, is all I can find in my Bookmarks.

Paul

 

[Ed Cryer]

If you were going go the batch file route, you'd have to write one that
traverses the entire file system on all available disks. You would
probably run into problems with permissions in certain locations that
might make the batch file stop. IMO the testing and tweaking of the
batch file wouldn't be worth it for this one-time operation.

I think it would be better to use a search program to find them all,
then you can eyeball the list to make sure it's not catching anything
you don't intend, and then you can consign them all to the recycle bin.
Unfortunately, Windows 7's built in search makes some very
unintelligent assumptions about where and what it should search for,
and it's difficult to persuade it to act otherwise. That's why I use
Everything Search (http://www.voidtools.com/). It's free and simple,
and once you let it build its index of files, it's super fast at
finding things. I'd let it search for *.mta, select them all, and hit
Delete.

Thanks for that. I already had it installed, but I didn't know it would
do the job so quickly and efficiently.
I did the search, 300+ found in under a second (including the external
drive), selected all, deleted.
I'd previously emptied the Recycle Bin, so I set column heading to show
"file type", scrolled down to check only .mta extensions were there,
looked in some folders where videos are kept and found the .mta files
had gone, emptied the Recycle Bin.

Regards, Ed

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

I installed Samsung Allshare and then uninstalled it, but it's left a
vast number of .MTA files scattered all over the place. They're
thumbnails it created; and there's one for every video file, hundreds.

I need a batch delete command that will get rid of the lot, including
those in hidden folders and external drives.

Any suggestions?

Ed

1.
In a command window, run "del /?" (no quotes). You will see switches for
subdirectories, hidden files, et al.

Your batch file would need a separate command for each external drive.

I'd suggest running the batch file in an elevated command window.

2.
OTOH, FileLocator Lite will let you search over several drives. You
could then highlight all items found, and choose Delete.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

1.
In a command window, run "del /?" (no quotes). You will see switches for
subdirectories, hidden files, et al.

Your batch file would need a separate command for each external drive.

I'd suggest running the batch file in an elevated command window.

2.
OTOH, FileLocator Lite will let you search over several drives. You
could then highlight all items found, and choose Delete.

And after refreshing my newsgroups, I see you did what I suggested
(differnt program, but heck...).

 

[Ed Cryer]

And after refreshing my newsgroups, I see you did what I suggested
(differnt program, but heck...).

Yes. It quite staggered me with how quickly it worked. Mind you I've
been trying for years to understand how Google manages to work so
quickly; and without success.

As an additional thing, I did a search at the Win7 orb for .mta, and it
found quite a few. None with that as an extension; mostly text and
script files. I looked inside a few and couldn't find ".mta", but did
find "mta".
So I did another search at the orb for just mta, and the hits are
exactly the same.

I then got the same hits with "m..........at" as with "mat"; and with
"m.,.,,,...at"; and so on.

Hhhhmm! I'm not so sure that I approve of that. I would prefer a string
to be a string!

Ed

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

Yes. It quite staggered me with how quickly it worked. Mind you I've
been trying for years to understand how Google manages to work so
quickly; and without success.

As an additional thing, I did a search at the Win7 orb for .mta, and it
found quite a few. None with that as an extension; mostly text and
script files. I looked inside a few and couldn't find ".mta", but did
find "mta".
So I did another search at the orb for just mta, and the hits are
exactly the same.

I then got the same hits with "m..........at" as with "mat"; and with
"m.,.,,,...at"; and so on.

Hhhhmm! I'm not so sure that I approve of that. I would prefer a string
to be a string!

Ed

I think you'd get more consistent & more pleasing results by searching
in the Windows Explorer search bar with the 'ext:mta' syntax.

But I rarely use Windows Explore to search, so I could easily be wrong.

 

[Paul]

I think you'd get more consistent & more pleasing results by searching
in the Windows Explorer search bar with the 'ext:mta' syntax.

But I rarely use Windows Explore to search, so I could easily be wrong.

Well, at least try ext:.mta or ext:mta and see what happens.
As a fun experiment. Just to prove there is a sane way to do it,
using nothing but Windows.

Paul

 

[Rob]

Well, at least try ext:.mta or ext:mta and see what happens.
As a fun experiment. Just to prove there is a sane way to do it,
using nothing but Windows.

Paul

Hi Paul, for fun I just tried this with ext:.jpg in the Start
button search box - it worked fine (and also found hundreds
of jpg attachments in my Outlook folders, including archives!)
Searching from within Windows Explorer pointing at a specific
drive narrows the scope down to searching just that drive or
folder, of course.

 

[Ed Cryer]

Thanks for that. I already had it installed, but I didn't know it would
do the job so quickly and efficiently.
I did the search, 300+ found in under a second (including the external
drive), selected all, deleted.
I'd previously emptied the Recycle Bin, so I set column heading to show
"file type", scrolled down to check only .mta extensions were there,
looked in some folders where videos are kept and found the .mta files
had gone, emptied the Recycle Bin.

Regards, Ed

I think I've discovered why Everything is so fast. It only searches for
file names; ie. it just searches the volume indices.

Win7 on the other hand does these things;
1. Indexes contents of files; builds a vast index file (Windows.edb)
mine being c 1GB.
2. A default search includes both names and content.
3. To limit it to a search type you have to input a type param (as Paul
says, with his "ext:.mta" example).

It's horses for courses; it depends what type of searching you do most
often.
In this case Everything was tailor-made. But if I wanted to search for
some email or document in which I'd mentioned Fred Fannakapan, well, it
just couldn't do it.

Ed

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

Hi Paul, for fun I just tried this with ext:.jpg in the Start
button search box - it worked fine (and also found hundreds
of jpg attachments in my Outlook folders, including archives!)
Searching from within Windows Explorer pointing at a specific
drive narrows the scope down to searching just that drive or
folder, of course.

I didn't know the ext syntax worked in the Start box. Thanks.

For fun, I tried the search with and without the dot. The results looked
the same on the first panel. I didn't compare the "See more results"
output, although I noticed that clicking it brings up a Windows Explorer
window.

 

[Nil]

I think I've discovered why Everything is so fast. It only
searches for file names; ie. it just searches the volume indices.

Win7 on the other hand does these things;
1. Indexes contents of files; builds a vast index file
(Windows.edb) mine being c 1GB.
2. A default search includes both names and content.
3. To limit it to a search type you have to input a type param (as
Paul says, with his "ext:.mta" example).

It's horses for courses; it depends what type of searching you do
most often.
In this case Everything was tailor-made. But if I wanted to search
for some email or document in which I'd mentioned Fred Fannakapan,
well, it just couldn't do it.

Oh, yeah, I thought that was understood. For my use, Everything does
95% of what I need. I rarely want to search for content, it's almost
always file names. Everything is so damn fast for that it's like a
miracle.

I plan to try to get more used to Windows own search, if only for those
rare times I want to search for content. My experience has been
disappointing so far. It is deadly slow and I am never comfortable that
it has found everything I expect. That makes it fairly useless to me.

 

[Dave]

I installed Samsung Allshare and then uninstalled it, but it's left a
vast number of .MTA files scattered all over the place. They're
thumbnails it created; and there's one for every video file, hundreds.

I need a batch delete command that will get rid of the lot, including
those in hidden folders and external drives.

Any suggestions?

Ed

Not sure where to put this reply, but a freeware utility called agent
ransack is very good. You can search by filename or content and it will
use regular expression syntax if you want, very powerful if you know how
to use it. Windows findstr is supposed to be similar to linux grep for
finding content, but I've never used it.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

Not sure where to put this reply, but a freeware utility called agent
ransack is very good. You can search by filename or content and it will
use regular expression syntax if you want, very powerful if you know how
to use it. Windows findstr is supposed to be similar to linux grep for
finding content, but I've never used it.

Also, FileLocator Lite is another name for the same program.

http://www.mythicsoft.com/page.aspx?type=filelocatorlite&page=home

 

[Ed Cryer]

Not sure where to put this reply, but a freeware utility called agent
ransack is very good. You can search by filename or content and it will
use regular expression syntax if you want, very powerful if you know how
to use it. Windows findstr is supposed to be similar to linux grep for
finding content, but I've never used it.

It sounds good in the write-up, but I guess it builds its own index and
then has to have a resident program continually updating. That would
leave me with two vast search indices, and two search-systems running.

Ed

 

[Ed Cryer]

Never heard of Everything before so I downloaded it and gave it a try. I
was astonished that it found 1,359,453 hidden jpg files in the Art Cache
folder of Windows Media Player and I don't even use it. It has just
taken seven and a half hours to delete them all. At least I have
recovered 52GB of hard disk space. I kept wondering why the system
partition was filling up when I wasn't adding anything. Needless to say
I have now disabled Windows Media Player Network Sharing Services.

Blimey! That is big.
I disabled mine some time ago when I found out what it was doing, but I
don't think the cache got that full.
You must have a vast music library.

Ed

 

[Ken Blake]

Not sure where to put this reply, but a freeware utility called agent
ransack is very good. You can search by filename or content and it will
use regular expression syntax if you want, very powerful if you know how
to use it.

Agent Ransack is excellent, if you want to search by content. But if
you want to search by file name, Search Everything is *much* faster.

So I use both, and choose which one depending on what I want to search
by.

 

[mick]

Blimey! That is big.
I disabled mine some time ago when I found out what it was doing, but I don't
think the cache got that full.
You must have a vast music library.

Ed

About 38,000 tracks, I assume it must create album art every time a
track is played, although I use MediaMonkey for organising and playing
and occasionally VLC media player. I have never played anything with
Windows Media Player.

Just done an image backup this morning and the difference in size from
the old image is substantial plus it only took 20 minutes to do.

 

[Ed Cryer]

About 38,000 tracks, I assume it must create album art every time a
track is played, although I use MediaMonkey for organising and playing
and occasionally VLC media player. I have never played anything with
Windows Media Player.

Just done an image backup this morning and the difference in size from
the old image is substantial plus it only took 20 minutes to do.

I've just found another mess of repeated files for an uninstalled
program. OneNote Table of Contents. 800 in all. So I've just done the
Everything search and delete with them.

It makes me wonder just how many more of these tags and thumbnails are
scattered across my system. I think I can see what's happening.
I install a program; it has to peruse my system and build a dB of
relevant files; sometimes laying down thumbnails and suchlike against
each one. That takes time, and if they were to be removed by the
uninstall process that would take just as long, so they omit it.
Result, clutter.

Does anyone know of a utility that could help me find any more of these
that may be here?

Ed