I was wrapping up for the night (it was like 11:30 PM or something), and about to head for bed. I needed to use a video converting program to manufacture a good set of JPG images from a 22-something minute long AVI file that was 270 MB. I just needed a few screenshots, but to do that, I had to convert the entire thing, which is about a 8 or 10 minute process. So, I started the program up and opened the file up in the software. Now, I didn't want my desktop getting bombed (as it has before), so I created a simply named folder on the Desktop and directed the program to convert to that folder. I had it start the converting process, and I went off to brush my teeth. I later came back to find, to my horror, that the program didn't convert to my folder as it was instructed to; it converted straight to my desktop. My desktop got hit with over 40,000 JPG images that were around 10 KB each and totaled 450-something MB. My RAM was starting to get sucked dry.
I had done this before, but it was with a 3 or 5 minute AVI that only produced a few thousand images, not tens-of-thousands.
It was late, and I wanted the mess to end NOW. To clean the mess up as quickly as posssible, I decided to move all of my "important" files to the "C:\" directory and make a new Desktop folder in C:\Documents and Settings\"Manny"\. I renamed "Desktop" to "Desktopj" and quickly created a new folder named "Desktop," This is when things got stupid. It continued to think that Desktopj was the real desktop, but it wouldn't let me delete Desktop because Windows XP also thought that was the real Desktop, so I had two different Desktops. I had to reset the computer (which was a belated process) to delete Desktop and be able to rename Desktopj back to Desktop. When I did, I decided to go with the long task of creating drag windows and deleting the files that way, since I could find a cheap way to dispose of the garbage that didn't involve outright deleting the folder Desktop (I didn't want to find out what would happen if I did). I found that it dragged quicker if I reduced the window height to almost nil and moved the folder windows to the very top of the screen. I would create a drag box as close as I could to the top, then move the mouse all the way down. It was dragging pretty fast, and whenever it got slow, I would just delete what I had dragged (usually around 6000 to 10000 files) up to that point. The more I had gotten rid of, the quicker the computer was and the quicker the folder navigating process was (I liked to monitor how many files it was actually removing since it never told me directly). When I had gotten rid of it, I loaded the program up again and once again set it to convert to my specialized folder, which it actually did this time (it was still a 8-10 minute process converting, though). When it had finished, I seached around in the mass of JPG images, found the 3 images I wanted, and spent around 9 or 10 minutes recycling the rest (you know, it takes much more time to recycle two 250 MB files than it does 40,000 10 KB files). When all was finsihed and the computer was shut down and I got to bed, it had to be at least 1:30 AM here. Ugh.
Don't you just love computer troubles that keep you up late (or early, whatever) in the morning? Have you ever had weird computer troubles like this? (I also recently had an antivirtus program situation that keep me up to am even later 2:30 or 3:00 AM, and got me up at 5:00 when I realized the computer was still on and that I had fallen to sleep admist the process)
