Note: This guide is written for Windows 7 but most tips apply for Windows Vista

Save Battery Power

Here are some ways to save your battery’s power. You don’t need to apply all these tips but every little helps.

1. Turn Down Screen Brightness

To turn down screen brightness, click the battery icon in the system tray and click Adjust screen brightness.

Slide the brightness slider to the left until you can comfortably see the screen and it’s dimmest setting.

2. Cut Down on Background Applications

Many background applications don’t need to run and only increase CPU cycles and, in turn, the demand on your battery. Here’s a couple of things you can do to cut down on background applications:

2a. Disable Windows Sidebar Gadgets

If you don’t use the sidebar, you probably have it disabled already (right click the Windows Sidebar icon in the system tray and click Exit.)

If you use the Windows Sidebar, do you really need all your gadgets running when you’re on battery power? To disable Windows Sidebar gadgets:

Click the Start button and click Control Panel. Type gadget in the top-right search box, and click View list of running gadgets.

Next to the running gadgets, click remove.

2b. Diable Startup applications

To disable uneccessary startup applications, follow this guide.

3. Disable Your Wireless Internet & Bluetooth

If you’re not using the internet or Bluetooth, consider disabling the hardware to save battery power. To disable your wireless, bluetooth, or both cards, either:

A. Locate the switch on the side of your laptop (many now have this) and turn your wirelesss cards off.

or

B. Click the network icon in the system tray and click Open Network and Sharing Center.

In the left-hand menu, click Change adapter settings.

Right click your wireless connection and click Disable.

Repeat for your Bluetooth device.

4. Disable Screensavers

Screensavers use CPU when your PC is idle. To disable your screensaver:

Right click the Desktop and click Personalize.

Click Screen Saver.

In the drop down list, select (None) and click OK.

5. Change Power Options

You what your computer does to save power when idle. To do so, click the battery icon in the system tray and click More power options.

Select Power saver and click Change plan settings.

Lower the time it takes for your computer to dim the display, turn off the display, and sleep when on battery.

Click Change advanced power settings to fine tune your power-saving preferences.

6. Adjust Visual Effects

Visual effects also use CPU and memory and this drains your battery. To lower the effects and save battery power:

Click the Start button, click Control Panel, and type visual in the top-right search box. Click Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows.

Select Adjust for best performance and click OK.

7. Turn off Windows Aero

Windows Aero enables the glass effect you see on your Windows. This (surprise surprise) also uses CPU and memory and should be disabled to save battery. To disable Windows Aero:

Right click the desktop and click Personalization. Click Window Color.

Uncheck Enable transparency and click OK.

8. Disable the Search Index

The search index indexes your files for quick searching. This is a convenience but comes at a great cost to battery life when it’s running. To save power, consider disabling the search index. To disable the search index:

Click the Start button, click Control Panel, and type index in the top-right search box. Click Change how Windows searches.

Click Modify.

Remove all locations by unchecking them and click OK.

9. Keep Your PC Cool

The hotter your PC gets, the harder your fans have to work to keep it cool. To minimize the power drawn by your fans, keep your PC cool. If using it on your lap or on a pillow, ensure there is proper ventilation. Never use your PC on a blanket or soft surface where airflow is restricted. This will also keep your hardware working longer as hardware is less likely to overheat and fail.

10. Only Use Your Screen When You Need it

This tip links back to tip number 5. When in the power options, click Choose what closing the lid does. I always set the lid closing to do nothing and the power button to put the laptop to sleep. This way, when I’m taking a break, I can put my laptop lid down (which turns off the display and saves power) without my laptop going to sleep. I’m also lucky because my laptop has a Display button that, when pressed, turns off my display. I found this button very useful when I sat in class and didn’t need to use my laptop but didn’t want to close and open the lid repeatedly.

11. Disable Automatic Program Updates

Many programs like iTunes, Java etc. come with their own auto updating software. These programs frequently communicate with update servers and, collectively, can take a toll on battery life. It’s important to keep software up to date; however, you should consider disabling update checkers for software installed on your PC. Good software lets you disable this behavior when you install it; some software may require a little bit of digging to disable automatic update checking.

Here’s how to stop Java checking for updates:

Click the Start button and click Control Panel. When the Control Panel loads, type java in the search box, and click Java:

On the Update tab, uncheck Check for Updates Automatically:

Click Never Check:

Note: I’ve noticed the scheduled task for Java update checking is often left behind.

To remove the task:

Click the Start button, type task, and click on Task Scheduler

When the task Scheduler loads, click Task Scheduler Library in the left pane

In the right pane, look for the Java Update task, right click it, and click Disable:

12. Remove Peripherals and Media

CDs spinning in drives, external hard disk drives, memory cards in slots, and even a plugged in USB thumb drives all drain power at varying levels. Remove all external drives, cards, and CDs to save battery power and the life of your machine.

13. Add more RAM

I just added 1GB of RAM to a netbook and I noticed the battery life is quite a lot better. This is because when you run out of memory, application data is written to the hard disk (virtual memory), which requires the movement of mechanical parts and not just electrons alone. By adding RAM to a computer that is always swapping/thrashing, you’ll save a noticeable about of battery life.

14. Use Hibernate not Sleep/Standby

If you want good battery life that spans multiple sessions, consider hibernating your PC instead of putting it to sleep/on stand by mode. Hibernation mode stores all volatile memory on disk and requires less power than leaving volatile memory in RAM for quick access when you turn your PC on. You can easily use a whole battery in two weeks or less of sleep mode, so you could be losing around 10% of battery life each day your laptop is sleeping instead of hibernating (if you’re not using hybrid sleep mode.) For more details on sleep vs hibernate, visit this guide.

To hibernate your PC, click the Start button, click the arrow next to Shut Down, and click Hibernate:

If you do not see the option to hibernate, press the Windows Key + R (or click Start > Run), type the following, and press Enter:

powercfg -h on

If the option is still not available, a reboot is required to show the Hibernate option on the start menu.

Bonus Tip

To get a power efficiency report:

1. Click Start, type CMD, right click cmd.exe and click Run as Administrator.
2. On the command line, type powercfg -energy to view a power efficiency report.

If you’re using an SSD, there are a few things you can do to extend its life. One of the things you can do is move the search index cache.

The Search Index I/O activity can take a considerable toll on your system drive by keeping it busy. If you have an SSD, this may reduce its life. By moving the index to a separate drive, you can increase overall performance of your PC (more noticeable under load) and preserve the life of your SSD.

Move the Search Index to Another Drive

1. Click Start, type index in the search bar, and click indexing options

2. Click Advanced

3. Click Select new and select a new location on a different physical hard drive:

4. Click OK

The service will restart and moved the index to the new drive:

Note: While the index service is rebuilt on your new drive you may notice a decrease in system performance.

Image Resizer is an evolved product from the Image Resizer Powertoy Clone (which we have covered previously) by Brice Lambson, which allow the user to resize images with just a few clicks. Once it is installed, it sits comfortably in your right click context menu (only when you right click on images), and it is always ready for your resizing command.

How does it work?

Fairly simple. Just select all images, right click on them, and click Resize Pictures. Select your desired resolution (I suggest 1024×768 which is best balanced between quality and size for quick sharing, unless you want to share higher quality photos), click OK, and you are basically done.

However, you still have several advanced options to choose from if it’s needed.

Only shrink pictures – This option will only make the image smaller, not bigger. It means that if the original image is smaller than the resize scale, Image Resizer will not resize it.

Replace the originals – This option will directly resize the original image, without having the resized copy of it. Useful when you have to resize the images that are not meant to be kept in its original size.

What’s new since we last covered?

Currently the latest version of Image Resizer had stepped into Version 3 Preview 1, but don’t worry about the Preview 1 tag, it is fairly stable for normal usage (as claimed by the developer and tested by me.) .NET Framework 4 is required to run the new version though.

In this version, there are couple of new features implemented, and there are more promising features coming.

Resize image to new folder – This is a really interesting feature (the developer called it Black Magic). It will allows you to resize images into a newly created folder, which is particularly useful if the original images are meant to be kept. Create a new folder together with your bunch of images, select the images you want to resize, right-click-hold and drag-and-drop to the newly created folder, then select Resize pictures here. I really liked this feature a lot.

Progress bar – Compared to the older version, this one comes with a progress bar to show the resizing progress, which is really something good, since the older version tends to become unresponsive during the resizing process. No integration with the Windows 7 taskbar yet, but it’s a good start.

Metadata – The developer has rewritten the component for information preservation, therefore in this new version, all metadata from the original image will be kept. Good news for those who need every information from the original image.

Recycle replaced images – If you have selected the option Replace the originals before the resizing, all the replaced images will be transfer to Recycle Bin to avoid any complicated issue caused by the replacement. Just clean the Recycle Bin if the resized one is working well.

More features coming – Click on the Advance Settings, you can see the upcoming features, including JPEG quality level adjustment, user-defined default size, user-defined filename format, and selective metadata stripping. Good stuffs.

Performance

You might want to know how it performs in a bulk image resize. I did a simple test and the results will vary for everyone since it depends on the performance of your CPU, HDD etc., but I think it will be a good reference for those who wanted to know.

This test is performed on the PC equipped with AMD Athlon 7750 Dual-Core Processor (2.7GHz), 4GB DDR2 RAM, and SATA HDD 7200rpm. Image Resizer 3 Preview 1 and 130 images were resized to perform this simple test. After the test, I found that all 130 images are resized to 1024×768 in 1 minutes 45 seconds, which is pretty good in my opinion. Below is the comparison of the size before and after resizing:

Original: Average 2MB, 130 images, Total 293MB

Resized: Average 180KB, 130 images, Total 21.3MB

For quick sharing, the reduction of the total size from 293MB to 21.3MB is definitely much appreciated. All thanks to the Fant resampling algorithm, Image Resizer 3 is now able to produce small size, but higher quality output than the conventional JPEG compression algorithms.

If you prefer a official stable version of Image Resizer, you still can get the latest 2.1 stable, although I strongly recommended to get the version 3 since it is quite stable as well.

Download Image Resizer 3 Preview 1

Download Image Resizer 3 Preview 1 (Download .NET Framework 4 – Needed for v.3)

Download Image Resizer 2.1

Download Image Resizer 2.1

Setting up a second (third, fourth … ) account in Outlook.

Adding several accounts to your Outlook 2010 is a simple task. Using them and switching between them is also very easy. What you DO need to decide before adding several accounts is, which will function as your main account, and should the accounts use the same PST-file (the database storing your emails) or should you use separate PST-files ?

Functionality will be the same, no matter what you choose.

In the last section, I will give my thoughts on pros and cons using one or two PST-Files.

Adding more Accounts

1. Click the FILE tab (the yellow one)
2. Click the ACCOUNTS-button and then the Account-Link popping up underneath it.
3. Follow the steps found here.

Choose between the two

1. Start writing a new Email
2. In the top left corner you find the From, To, CC-buttons.
    

   Notice that the FROM-button now has a little arrow attached to it.
   Clicking it will allow you to choose which account to send from

If you have decided to use several PST-files, you may also choose which account to use by simply highlighting the appropriate InBox in the account/folder listing, before opening a new Email Document. Outlook will choose the account corresponding to the InBox selected.

Several Signatures

If you automatically want to add signatures to your new emails, you can set Outlook to use different Signatures for different accounts. Here’s how.

1. Start a new Message
2. Click the Insert Ribbon
   
3. Click the Signature Button
4. Choose Signatures from the drop down menu
5. In the Signatures Dialogue window,  Add and design a new signature

Connecting each signature to a different account

Setting this up, may not be very intuitive to you (Another Note to the Outlook developers). But it is rather simple one you know how.

In the right hand side of the Signatures Window there are three pull-down menus titled “Choose Default Signatures”. It would be fair to assume you choose these settings while creating your Signature, but that’s not it. They have no relations to the Signature creation what so ever. They really should have been put in a separate dialog window. But that’s another discussion.

After creating all of your signatures they will appear in the pull-down menus.

1. In the first pulldown menu, choose which email account to attach a signature to
2. In the second choose which signature to use (if any) when starting a new Email
3. In the third one, choose which signature to use (if any) when replying to an email

The settings are stored immediately and you do not need to close the Signature Window until you’re all done.

Using One or Two PST-files ?

The following reflects my experience. You may experience it differently, and if so please feel free to add your own comments on the matter.

Choosing one PST-file may slow down performance when the one file get large. On the upside, you will only have one set of folders to worry about (one inbox, sent box, deleted items etc.). You will also not need a large monitor to see all inboxes at once in the folder/account listing.

Choosing two PST-files may increase your security and performance as the files will be smaller. Backup and deleting an account will be easier. You get more control over each account. On the downside, you will need a large monitor to be able to see each inbox in the folder/account listing, and you are not able to choose which folders to display in the listing except from expanding (or collapsing) the entire account folder (NOTE to the developers; add this functionality in the next Office)

Uninstalling applications is never as seamless a process as installing them. Although Windows PCs come with a built-in utility, the Add or Remove Programs utility, that allows users to easily uninstall various applications and software, it usually fails to do the required job when you need to uninstall certain applications, such as McAfee Antivirus suite or DirectX.

Incomplete uninstallation may cause errors and complications on the system. Leftover processes of a previously installed program may interfere with other running processes and cause application errors, as well as performance related issues, such as frequent software crashes and system slow downs. This is why it is absolutely essential that when you remove a program you ensure that all its associated processes, files, and registry entries are also permanently deleted.

With the help of two examples, McAfee antivirus suite and DirectX we discuss how to uninstall programs that may not get completely removed using the Add or Remove Programs utility.

Before we discuss this, let’s see how to use the Add or Remove Programs utility to uninstall applications, such as Microsoft Office 2007.

Uninstall Office 2007 using Add or Remove Programs

Uninstalling programs using the Add or Remove Programs utility is simple, as this example shows.

1. Click Start and then click Control Panel to open its corresponding window.
2. Double-click Add or Remove Programs.
3. Locate and select Office 2007.
4. Click Uninstall.

In the following section, we discuss how to completely uninstall applications, such as McAfee Antivirus and DirectX that the Add or Remove Programs utility may fail to remove.

Uninstall McAfee

When it comes to removing antivirus suites, the Add or Remove Programs utility is often found to be wanting. This may be because of the fact that such programs place their files and entries deep into the system and the Add or Remove Programs utility fails to remove them completely.

Most Antivirus software manufacturers, therefore, release an uninstaller tool for their line of products. It is best to use such uninstaller tools – these tools are typically distributed from the software manufacturer’s website for free – to remove antivirus software. In case the software manufacturer does not provide an uninstaller tool, you may use a reliable professional uninstaller tool.

To remove McAfee, first remove the software using the Add or Remove Programs utility – the same way as you uninstall any other application. Next, visit McAfee’s official website and download MCPR.exe, which is the uninstaller tool for McAfee products. After you have downloaded the MCPR.exe file on to your desktop, double-click it to run the uninstaller tool.

Uninstall DirectX

DirectX is an application that is built-in to your Windows system. An attribute peculiar to DirectX is that it cannot be uninstalled using the Add or Remove Programs utility, as the application does not appear in your installed programs list.

If for some reason you need to remove the version of DirectX installed on your computer then simply remove the DirectX entry from the registry and Delete the DirectX folder.

Important: Before making any changes to the registry, always back up the registry first. You can make registry backups either manually or by using a reliable registry maintenance software.

1. Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and press Enter.
2. Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\DirectX
3. Delete all the keys for DirectX.
4. Right-click the Directx folder in left-pane and click Delete.
5. Restart Windows.

Note: It is not possible to completely remove DirectX from the PC as it is an integral part of the operating system. The above steps uninstall the upgraded version of DirectX from the PC and reinstall the default DirectX version for your Windows operating system when the PC is restarted.

James Ricketts is a writer whose work can be seen at Instant-Registry-Fixes.org. To find out more about his work or to contact him, please visit Instant-Registry-Fixes.org.

In this article you will discover a neat way to summarize data across Excel sheets without having to reference each of them. This technique will work even if you add a new sheet.

Defining a Range of Sheets

Consider the following example: The fictitious expense reports for the equally fictitious XYZ Widget Company’s various offices. Each sheet in the workbook contains the expense data for each of the company’s offices. Below you can see the expense data for the New-York office:

The Expenses workbook holds a similar sheet for the Chicago and LA offices.

Now, let’s create a total expense report in the worksheet called ‘Country Wide Expenses’. The sheet already exists, but we have to actually fill it with data:

We’ll use the SUM function to add the contents of the corresponding cells on each sheet by doing the following:

• We’ll select cell B5
• Then we’ll type in =SUM(
• We’ll click on the NYC Office worksheet tab and Excel will add ‘NYC Office’! to the formula in the formula bar
• We’ll then click on cell B5 in the ‘NYC Office’ sheet and B5 will be added to the formula, so now, the formula bar will show: =SUM(‘NYC Office’!B5
• Finally, while holding the Shift key, we’ll click on the ‘Chicago Office’ tab; this will insert a range of sheets into the formula which will be shown in the formula bar in the following way:

=SUM(‘NYC Office:Chicago Office’!B5

• We’ll finish up the formula by closing the parenthesis and pressing the Enter key

Excel will return to the ‘Country Wide Expenses’ sheet, and this is what we get:

What we did here was to create a range of cells across sheets. Pretty neat isn’t it?

Excel uses the colon sign – : – as the range marker; if put between two cell references, Excel will consider the reference to be for all the cells in the range. For example, A1:B3 contains 6 cells: A1, A2, A3, B1, B2 and B3. But when the colon sign is found between worksheet names, the range covers all the sheets between the names, so in our case, the range includes cell B5 on all the office expenses sheets (as we selected the first and last one).

Drag to Fill

All that’s left is to use the same formula to fill up the table:

• We’ll grab the fill handle and drag it to the right so it will cover the 12 month columns of the table
• Then we’ll grab the fill handle again and drag it down so it will cover the whole table

And so we’re done in about a minute of work:

Summary

In this article we’ve dealt with using ranges across worksheets which is a very powerful but rarely used technique. It is also important to remember that this technique is not limited to the SUM function; it works with every Excel function that handles ranges. You can use it to average data, find the lowest or the highest number across sheets and much more.

About the Author: Joseph Reese is the founder of Excel-Formulas.com an Excel consulting firm.Head over to his website if you want to improve your performance with Excel.

Today, we rely on the Internet to carry out various functions and it is no fun when your web browser, such as Internet Explorer, develops an error and fails to load. In this article, we will discuss how to resolve common errors associated with Internet Explorer as well as the following topics:

• How to remove additional toolbars from Internet Explorer, such as the yahoo toolbar.
• How to resolve system error 5
• Essential PC maintenance activities that every Windows user should perform to prevent common Windows errors and issues from occurring.

Iexplore.exe Application Error

Iexplore.exe is the executable file of the popular web browser Internet Explorer. You may encounter the following error when you try to start Internet Explorer 6.0 on a Windows XP computer:

“Iexplore.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.”

Typically, the error occurs when the following conditions hold true:

• Browser Helper Objects (BHO), such as Morpheus, Morpheus Shopping Club, WURLD Shopping Community, or BuyersPort are installed.
• You are logged in to your computer with a limited user account.

The error occurs when the installed BHOs try to make changes to specific system files and registry entries but cannot do so because of limited access. You may perform either of the following tasks to fix the error:

• Log on to your computer as an administrator.
• Remove the BHOs from your computer.

Uninstall Yahoo Toolbar

To achieve this, perform the following steps:

1. Close any open Internet Explorer Window.
2. Click Start and then click Control Panel to open its corresponding window.
3. Next, double-click Add or Remove Programs.
4. Now, locate and select Yahoo Toolbar.
5. Click the Uninstall button.
6. Restart Internet Explorer.

System Error 5

This error occurs if there is a problem with permissions to access another Windows computer. For instance, you may receive the error while trying to access a Windows Vista computer on your network from a Windows XP computer using the Net View command. One of the common causes of this error is Time Synchronization issues. Assuming this is the cause the error, you can resolve the error by performing the following steps:

1. Click Start, click Run, type cmd, and press Enter.
2. At command prompt type NET TIME /QUERYSNTP and press Enter to execute the command.
3. In case an error is reported, type NET TIME /DOMAIN /SET /YES and press Enter.
4. Also, ensure that Time Zones are set correctly.

Essential PC maintenance activities

By regularly performing the following PC maintenance activities you can not only prevent various Window errors, but also resolve various PC performance related issues.

Run malware scans – Install a robust antimalware software, update it regularly, and perform regular malware scans on your entire computer to ensure your Windows PC remains safe from malicious programs.

Update Windows files – Keep the built-in Automatic Update feature enabled to ensure new Windows updates are automatically installed on your computer.

Update third-party drivers – Use a reliable driver update tool or manually update your third-party drivers regularly.

Clean the Windows registry – Clean your Windows registry regularly using a top-rated registry cleaner tool to ensure your registry remains healthy and error-free.

James Ricketts is a writer whose work can be seen at Instant-Registry-Fixes.org. To find out more about his work or to contact him, please visit Instant-Registry-Fixes.org.

Its been a long wait for some of us but it’s officially here, finally!

Microsoft have released Service Pack 1 for Windows 7 bringing notable new features such as Dynamic Memory, Remote FX and improved HDMI audio device performance. Security updates and hotfixes have also been rolled up into the SP.

Before you dive in to downloading and installing, please check out all the documentation to ensure your install goes smoothly.

Prerequisites :

• Your current operating system must be the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) version of Windows 7 (build 7600). (How Do I Know Which Operating System I am Using? [Quick Tip])
• Users updating through Windows Update/WSUS must install the Servicing Stack Update (SSU) that handles the installation and removal of software updates, language packs, and optional Windows features. This update is necessary to successfully install or uninstall the service pack; it also improves the performance and reliability of the service pack installation. This update is part of the standalone update package and will be offered as a separate package on Windows Update.

Documentation:

• Deployment Guide for Windows 7 with SP1
• Hotfixes and Security Updates included in Windows 7 SP1
• Release Notes for Windows 7 with SP1
• Notable Changes in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1

Update Readiness Tools:

• Windows 7 x86
• Windows 7 x64

SP1 Download Links:

• Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1
• Windows 7 SP1 x86 (538MB EXE)
• Windows 7 SP1 x64 (903MB EXE)
• Windows 7 SP1 x86 and x64 (1953MB ISO)

Physical Media:

• Service Pack 1 Physical Media Ordering

Cleanup:

Note that this removes backup files created during the SP installation thus the SP cannot be uninstalled after this operation has completed.

In an elevated command prompt run

dism /online /cleanup-image /spsuperseded

Troubleshooting:

• "The following updates might need to be reinstalled" message when you try to install SP1 for Windows 7 or for Windows Server 2008 R2

Uninstallation:

Providing you haven’t run cleanup, you can uninstall the SP by running (in an elevated command prompt)

wusa /uninstall /kb:976932

I recently learned that you can re-arrange the category arrangement, making it appear just as YOU think it should. It does involve editing the registry, but I’m sure that won’t scare you … much.

This tweak is generally for PRO and ULTIMATE users, but you may still be able to tweak some of the Control Panel Applets on lower versions.

Open RegEdit

1. In your registry editor, navigate to the following key:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE|SOFTWARE|Microsoft|Windows|CurrentVersion|Control Panel|Extended Properties|{305CA226-D286-468e-B848-2B2E8E697B74}2
2. In the right pane, find the item that you want to re-categorize. Double click it to bring up its properties box.
   NOTE! Depending on your Windows version of choice, the number of items available in the list may vary – a lot.
3. Change the DWORD value to the number that corresponds to the category where you want to place it (See the list below)

Numbers for each category

• Other Control Panel Options – 0
• Appearance and Themes – 1
• Printers and other Hardware – 2
• Network and Internet Connections – 3
• Sounds, Speed and Audio Devices – 4
• Performance and Maintenance – 5
• Date, Time, Language and Regional Options – 6
• Accessibility Options – 7
• Add or Remove Programs – 8
• User Accounts – 9

Recently, I asked iTunes to organize my music directory (getting music from different sources other than just the iTunes store left it a little messy and I decided I’d let iTunes do its thing) and it did a great job; however, it left a bunch of empty directories. Although these empty directories didn’t pose any performance impact, they just looked… messy and I decided I’d delete them. I started doing this one by one and soon realized I had over 50 empty directories and sub directories. Being lazy, I decided to run a command to remove these directories. I’ve done this a lot in Linux so I figured it was easy; well, not quite, but it’s also not that hard. In this guide, I’ll show you what I did and hope you can find this useful in some way.

Remove Empty Directories Using the Command Line

Note: “Directory” and “folder” interchangeable terms in this context.

What I decided to do was list out all directories and parse them out to a batch file. To do this:

1. Open the command prompt (press Winkey+R, type cmd, and press Enter.)

2. Change the directory to the base directory containing the empty folders and sub-folders. In my case I switched to the Y: drive with the command:

y:

and then changed to my iTunes music directory with the command

cd Y:\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Music

3. Run the following command:

dir /ad/b/s | sort /r >>out.bat

This command does the following:

dir - Runs the directory command

/ad – Selects files with the “directory” attribute i.e. all folders

/b – Base listing i.e. just folder names

/s – Include sub-folders

| – Pipe output from the dir /ad/b/s command to the following command (sort.)

sort - Sort the output

/r -  In reverse order. So, when we get to the next step we’ll be able to delete empty subfolders before we delete the parent folders (otherwise the parent folders wouldn’t be seen as empty.) When making this guide, I missed this parameter and couldn’t work out why it was only deleting some folders — before realizing there was a pattern to the results.

>>out.bat – Created an output of the command in out.bat in the same directory you’re working in (in this case, the iTunes music folder.)

4. Now open out.bat in a good text editor that can handle regular expressions (RegEx) i.e. Notepad++. We’re going to modify this output to turn it into a series of commands that with remove the directories (RD) one by one without deleting directories with files in them (default for the RD command.)

5. Press CTRL+R to open the Replace tool. Replace the first part of the directory path (i.e. Y:\Music\iTunes) with RD “[Directory path] RD in front of it. This basically adds RD (remove directory) to the front of every line:

i.e.

Find: Y:\Music\iTunes\iTunes

Replace: RD “Y:\Music\iTunes\iTunes

Note: Do this in either Normal or Extended search mode.

6. Now to add a double quote to the end of each line. You can either do this manually (which I am too lazy to do) or by using a regular expression (you could also do it in word using paragraph marks as your search criteria.)

You’ll want to find each line and replace it with the line and a double quote i.e.

Find: ^(.*)$

Replace: \1″

Click Replace All to update the whole file.

7. Now add the word PAUSE to the end of the batch file to show the output in case there are any errors:

8. The next two steps are optional but I advise you do them to ensure your directories are empty.

As Windows creates thumbnail files by default, directories with media files in them will likely have a thumbs.db file in each of them. First, you’ll need to show hidden files and then search the base directory for thumbs.db and delete them all (even in the folders that still contains files that you don’t want to delete.)

9. As iTunes also adds a bunch of .jpg files to each directory (that it didn’t clear up when rearranging them), you’ll need to delete these too. Search for *.jpg and delete them all (this will delete the files from directories you want to keep but iTunes will replace them if needed.)

10. Now the fun part: double click your saved batch file to run it. Click Run when prompted.

11. As we added the PAUSE at the end of the file, the command prompt will show us the output. Notice a lot of directories were not deleted as they are not empty. That’s a good thing.

12. Now go to the directory and check that the empty folders are deleted.

This may take some time the first time you do it, but I am sure it will save you a ton of time in the future.