How to delete 8 million files

I'm not exaggerating.

Apparently some Window Media Player service went beserk (probably over some time), and has created eight million files in .....\LocalMLS

Select this in any explorer or explorer alternate, click delete, and wait. For a very long time.
Use DOS CMD prompt, navigate to the directory, type either RMDIR /s or DEL *.JPG, and wait. For a very long time.

Days - and, as far as I can tell, not much useful has happened.

It's possible that these commands have to first make sense of the directory, then act on it.
Doesn't seem likely that anything is going to make sense of this.

I've looked for a utility (or command) that sort of acts like an axe (or a sledgehammer), but I've come up empty.

Thoughts are welcome.

MichaelAngelo

MichaelAngelo68 said:

I'm not exaggerating.

Apparently some Window Media Player service went beserk (probably over some time), and has created eight million files in .....\LocalMLS

Select this in any explorer or explorer alternate, click delete, and wait. For a very long time.
Use DOS CMD prompt, navigate to the directory, type either RMDIR /s or DEL *.JPG, and wait. For a very long time.

Did you click DELETE, or SHIFT+DELETE??

If you just click DELETE Windows will want to put the file in the recycle bin, for possible resurrection. Eventually, if you "empty trash" the files will truly be vaporized from the recycle bin.

If you instead use SHIFT+DELETE then the files are instantly vaporized, bypassing the recycle bin completely. Permanent and instant delete.

If you really want to get rid of everything in this \LocalMLS folder, I'd use SHIFT+DELETE.

So which was it??

I understand the difference, and the performance implications of each.

In this case, I don't get far enough to choose between DEL and SHIFT-DEL

Windows has to gather up information about eight million files before it can get to the "Do you want to delete all these files? Well, do you?" prompt.

Thanks for responding.

MichaelAngelo

MichaelAngelo68 said:

Windows has to gather up information about eight million files before it can get to the "Do you want to delete all these files? Well, do you?" prompt.

It's the normal behavior of Windows Explorer, it sort of "counts" the files before even begin to delete anything. Del vs Shift+Del is an Explorer-only thing too. Also, Explorer is terribly slow for anything of any volume, so 8 millions files will make it crawl like never before!

Really, you don't want to use Explorer.

I think a command prompt is the best choice here. It runs silently and don`t gives any clues about progress but it just does its thing. With such an amount of files however, it will take ages no matter what you do. Leaving it overnight seems to be the best option.