StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Before I start........ I know that recently, I seem to have been using this board to sound off com problems a lot lately, and I seldom post my thanks for such sage advice. Pls do not mistake this for a policy of ingratitude, rather, its a sustained policy of incompetence. Thank you.


Anyway, I encountered another "missing" file problem on my HD. I have this movie file I downloaded off the web, and its working just fine. However, I can't seem to be able to copy it to a disk, cause, Nero, WM player and so on and forth can't find the file at all. I can't even move it to another folder, cause, XP says the file is in use.

The problem was...... it worked before. I once attempted to write the file onto a CD, and it could be seen then. It was a failed write though, and a day later, when I tried to do a rewrite...... well, that's when all this stuff started to come in.. Anybody knows what the hell is going on?.

what type of file is it (as in, what's the extension)? what did you use to get the file? does it have any type of digital rights management? DRM may prevent copying it to more than a certain number of devices.

Okay, just so I understand the problem-
1. the file is definitely there (or at least Explorer shows it), but when you want to move it to another medium whatever SW you use claims it ain't there.
2.If you try to move it on your HDD, Explorer claims it's in use.
Did I get that right?
Ever tried copying it from the command line and then burning the copy?
Whenever Windows Explorer becomes confused about the status of a file (wether it's the mere existence of said file, it's read-only status, or it supposedly being in use) my first stop is usually the command line.
If you already tried that, I'm stumped ATM.

Darth_Zod wrote:what type of file is it (as in, what's the extension)? what did you use to get the file? does it have any type of digital rights management? DRM may prevent copying it to more than a certain number of devices.

WMV extension, Bit Torrent, and no DRM. At least, that what the tag says. The interesting thing is, the ID tag on the file is a tad strange. It reads the file as having 0kb in size, and 0 min length. That's preposterous, cause, I can run the file just fine. I just can't copy it, zip it, write it to CD or do anything else other than open it. I'm been tempted to delete the file and then restore it to see whether it works, but that's kinda a last resort.

Batman wrote:Okay, just so I understand the problem-
1. the file is definitely there (or at least Explorer shows it), but when you want to move it to another medium whatever SW you use claims it ain't there.
2.If you try to move it on your HDD, Explorer claims it's in use.
Did I get that right?
Ever tried copying it from the command line and then burning the copy?
Whenever Windows Explorer becomes confused about the status of a file (wether it's the mere existence of said file, it's read-only status, or it supposedly being in use) my first stop is usually the command line.
If you already tried that, I'm stumped ATM.

Mind clarifying? I did check whether it exist in MS-DOS, if that what you meant.

i think he's suggesting to make a copy via command line as opposed to using the gui. though i'm not entirely sure what kind of an impact if any that would have on it.

Darth_Zod wrote:i think he's suggesting to make a copy via command line as opposed to using the gui. though i'm not entirely sure what kind of an impact if any that would have on it.

Exactly. I am not saying this is the be-all end-all solution to such problems but I have noticed that bypassing Explorer CAN be a feasible workaround if for some reasons Winblows is confused about the state of the file (which the no size claim IMHO is an indicator of), because the command line simply isn't aware of most of the things that manage to confuse Explorer.
PainRack, simply try to copy the file on the command line and see what happens when you try to burn the copy. I'm not promising anything but I have, on occasion, solved problems that way (specifically the 'file in use' one you mentioned eralier).

Did you close the torrent/remove it from your BT client? I've had similar problems in the past with the original client, ABC, and Azureus, and I fixed them by either removing the torrent from my client (Azureus, ABC, and other queue-style clients) or closing the torrent (originaland other similar bare-bones clients). Also, sometimes the file still didn't work after doing the above, and restarting my comp fixed that.

Errrr. just to recheck. To copy the file, I type copy D:(filename) to D:, right?????

C:\copy C:\folder\filename.ext D:\folder at least i think that's what needs to be typed in. my dos command knowledge is a little rusty.

Darth Zods example is explicit enough, but I'll walk you through it if you want me to ,PR.
Gods, was the CommandLine Age really that long ago?

Did it actually finish downloading in your bittorrent client? Double-check to be absolutely sure! If not, its going to do that. If it is, then boot into command line safe mode (hit F8 before the windows logo shows up) and use DOS commands to move it.

move *location of movie here* *destination here*

(ie: move c:\movies\movie.avi c:\movies2\movie.avi)

(the move command actually does what it looks like, it moves the file to a different destination. Copy just makes another copy of the file in a different destination.)

An update:
Since the file had chinese characters in it, I chose to rename the file itself. Then just for a hark, I thought I move it in windows.......... it worked. And once I could move it, it now CD-writable.(well, I still haven't written it yet, so, cross cross)

Strange isn't it? Thanks for all the help.