You know. That hidden folder Windows creates. Not only on your hard drive, but any removable drives as well. No harm, no foul, right? Well, that's how it used to be. Recently I had quite an upsetting event. One of my most precious possessions is a very nice 9-speaker Bose audio system in my car. With two USB 2.0 ports, it affords me up to 16 GB of music via .MP3 files, which I have made the most of. That tiny little USB drive allows me to listen to nearly my entire music collection in my car.
While I don't add or subtract music very often with that flash drive, until recently doing so didn't seem to matter. However a few days ago, I did decide to reformat the drive and add my current music collection edited specifically for the car. No big deal....or so I thought. While I seldom use Windows 10 anymore, I decided as I first formatted the flash drive in Windows, to keep it that way for now. But when I reloaded the drive into my car's USB port, it played for a short time then the music stopped, and my whole LCD media screen slowly darkened, as if my audio system was dying. Holy crap...this is bad.
Luckily the first thing I did was to remove the drive, to note that the system came back on, and switched to my FM radio. Everything seemed to work fine, except for the USB drive. I reinserted the USB flash drive, and it all started to "die" again. Pulled it out, and all seemed well again. But not having access to my music is a personal disaster to me. I stopped listening to radio almost 99% since I got this car with this amazing audio system built-in. Deductive reasoning compelled me to focus on the USB drive, rather than the audio system as a whole. But what was the problem? I scanned the dive on my computer to first rule out any integrity issues with the drive itself. Everything seemed ok technically. I could still play the drive on my computer in either Linux or Windows. Go figure. I even decided once again to reformat the drive, and reload all the music files accordingly. Which of course, did not fix anything when I again inserted the drive into the USB port.
Here's the kicker: In the past I would get annoyed seeing the Windows "system volume information" folder in my song menu. Usually made a point of deleting it using my legacy Windows XP computer or using Linux Mint. (Deleting this folder in Windows 10 is doable, but I just prefer to do it in easier ways through other operating systems). Based on past experience I surmised that this folder and contents shouldn't be a problem, I decided to delete it in Linux just to see if it made any difference. And it did. When I again inserted the flash drive into the car's USB port, the music came on shown on my LCD media panel on the dashboard, and it never stopped.
Microsoft in their infinite wisdom (oxymoron) has done something to their system volume information to make it toxic to other operating systems. Do they know? Do they care? Would it matter if they did?
In essence heads up- that if you edit your song files in Windows, only to be played on another operating system and media platform. If so, delete that folder on your flash drive to prevent any funny business. Especially given their very proprietary stance on anything Microsoft, as well as their prejudice towards any entity considered a competitor. Another thing I ran into in using removable drives. It seems Windows 10 flags anything run on Linux, prompting you to scan and fix a flash drive. Even though it eventually tells you that there's nothing wrong with it. Yet another indicator that Microsoft doesn't want to share anything with anyone else.
While I don't add or subtract music very often with that flash drive, until recently doing so didn't seem to matter. However a few days ago, I did decide to reformat the drive and add my current music collection edited specifically for the car. No big deal....or so I thought. While I seldom use Windows 10 anymore, I decided as I first formatted the flash drive in Windows, to keep it that way for now. But when I reloaded the drive into my car's USB port, it played for a short time then the music stopped, and my whole LCD media screen slowly darkened, as if my audio system was dying. Holy crap...this is bad.
Luckily the first thing I did was to remove the drive, to note that the system came back on, and switched to my FM radio. Everything seemed to work fine, except for the USB drive. I reinserted the USB flash drive, and it all started to "die" again. Pulled it out, and all seemed well again. But not having access to my music is a personal disaster to me. I stopped listening to radio almost 99% since I got this car with this amazing audio system built-in. Deductive reasoning compelled me to focus on the USB drive, rather than the audio system as a whole. But what was the problem? I scanned the dive on my computer to first rule out any integrity issues with the drive itself. Everything seemed ok technically. I could still play the drive on my computer in either Linux or Windows. Go figure. I even decided once again to reformat the drive, and reload all the music files accordingly. Which of course, did not fix anything when I again inserted the drive into the USB port.
Here's the kicker: In the past I would get annoyed seeing the Windows "system volume information" folder in my song menu. Usually made a point of deleting it using my legacy Windows XP computer or using Linux Mint. (Deleting this folder in Windows 10 is doable, but I just prefer to do it in easier ways through other operating systems). Based on past experience I surmised that this folder and contents shouldn't be a problem, I decided to delete it in Linux just to see if it made any difference. And it did. When I again inserted the flash drive into the car's USB port, the music came on shown on my LCD media panel on the dashboard, and it never stopped.
Microsoft in their infinite wisdom (oxymoron) has done something to their system volume information to make it toxic to other operating systems. Do they know? Do they care? Would it matter if they did?
In essence heads up- that if you edit your song files in Windows, only to be played on another operating system and media platform. If so, delete that folder on your flash drive to prevent any funny business. Especially given their very proprietary stance on anything Microsoft, as well as their prejudice towards any entity considered a competitor. Another thing I ran into in using removable drives. It seems Windows 10 flags anything run on Linux, prompting you to scan and fix a flash drive. Even though it eventually tells you that there's nothing wrong with it. Yet another indicator that Microsoft doesn't want to share anything with anyone else.
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