I just recovered 60 GB on my C/ disk (win 7 - deleting media player dB)

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spacef
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I just recovered 60 GB on my C/ disk (win 7 - deleting media player dB)

Post by spacef »

Windows 7 - haven't looked if applicable in win 8/10.


Many of you may know this already, but I was so happy to have done it that I thougfht I could share it.

I've been struggling for 1 year now with the last couple of GB available on my C SSD. As I am always in the middle of something (device making or music or else...) it was difficult to find the right windows to get a new ssd and clone/re-do everything. BUT yesterday I went again in "treesize" software that allows to see which folders are the largest. I discovered that windows media player had a database of almost 60 GB ! mainly jjpegs of album covers. And I also noticed that most jpg was existing in hundreds of copies of the same image. All are from 2012/2013, the early days of this PC. I think I knew it, but forgot about all that, and rediscovered it yesterday, almost by chance. Also, because it is windows system files that I never dared to touch, but they are completely deletable.


You can check the folder (the folders marked yellow are "hidden folders" so you need to set windows so you can see them

C:/Windows/ServiceProfiles/NetworkServices/AppData/Local/Microsoft/MediaPlayer/ImageCache/LocalMLS/


(image cache may be something else, in your language).

I had several millions of files. ctrl+a won't work (too much time).
so deleting the whole folder is the only possible way.


- First I created a folder "FutureLocalMLS" is case i need to recreate the folder (i do it before to remember the exact spelling)
- Then selected the LocalMLS folder, and pressed delete.
- A few windows warning "this is a system file, windows or software may not work anymore"--> pressed YES + check "do this for all other files".
- it took approximately 12 hours to delete the whole database.
- Then I renamed the "FutureLocalMLS" into "LocalMLS" in case something in windows needs that folder. This is a precaution, but looks unecessary (eventhough it is still there even after uninstalling windows media player).

- There are tutorials on on how to uninstall Windows Media Player (google "uninstall window media player win 7" )
--> important to uninstall it, because I think that all this mess is due to WinPlayer rebuilding a database on next start if dB is empty or broken. so to make sure those files don't come back again, uninstalling windows media player is necessary. good thing that i don't use it much.

Rebooted the PC, all is fine.


So basically, I have recovred 60 GB of disk space and don't need to buy a disk or reinstall/clone anything.... fantastic....

it may sound like info from 10 years ago, but
I hope it helps :-)
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dawman
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Re: I just recovered 60 GB on my C/ disk (win 7 - deleting media player dB)

Post by dawman »

Excellent discovery.

I have always used DESKTOP to unzip and place new samples.
As the instruments/samples increased in size, the more trouble I had on my 256GB SSD.
I went in the Tree Folder and always found giant/unnecessary Windows folders.

Now I use 1TB SSD’s but still like a large overhead, so I clean things up.
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valis
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Re: I just recovered 60 GB on my C/ disk (win 7 - deleting media player dB)

Post by valis »

Looks good =]
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