re: clever solution to stop zune from deleting tracks no longer in library

Hi all,

Im not sure if this has been suggested already, but it is what works for me. I am in the process of loading up a zune as a gift for a family member. Needless to say, I have a small HD on my laptop and there is no way to have all the tracks I want on the zune, in a music library on the laptop. I would have to delete all *my* tracks. I dont use zune as my media player. So this is what works for me.

First I created a file on my desktop named empty.vbs I edited that file to read.
========================everything below this line to Next=====================
Const ForWriting = 2

Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")

For Each strArgument in Wscript.Arguments
    Set objFile = objFSO.OpenTextFile(strArgument, ForWriting)
    objFile.Write ""
    objFile.Close
Next


What I do is this. I move the tracks I want on the zune into my library and then sync them to the zune.
After its done syncing, I drag like 10 files, or so, at a time onto the icon for the file above (if I drag too many tracks the script fails.) This script empties out the contents of the files, but the file remains. The software doesnt realize it's a empty file *unless* you try and play the file in the zune software. So it doesnt delete the tracks and the files on the zune player remain.

Its a pita, but it works for me.

Hope someone else can use this :)

dude,  seems pretty clever to me. tnx for the post. just a question, you have the script to reverse the process...

just like filling the empty file with its original contents...

I am kinda suprised that this script didnt grab more attention. Maybe it was the weak subject line :)

I keep backups of all my tracks on dvd, so removing the data from my zune library isnt a big deal.

Reversing the process would be cool though!

 

Anyway, thanks for the kudos

Reversing the process is called restoring backups of the original song files.

bump

My Zune software won't let me drag any tracks out of the program's window, and when I try to drag the tracks into the vbs file from their actual folders, I get an error message that says

Script: [file location]
Line: 8
Char: 18
Error: Expected 'Next'
Code: 800A03FC
Source: Microsoft VBScript compilation error

Thanks in advance for any help with this.

That's because you didn't INCLUDE the "Next" in the script.

 

Aaaah, whoops, I misread the first post as saying "up to Next," meaning I shouldn't include it. I just figured he meant next as in "Next, you do this, etc etc." Haha, thanks! Don't I feel like a dunce now.

I dont know if this works for music, but  for videos i have the software set so that nothing is synced automatically(go into settings and you can set each category to synce automatically or not) So know i can delete videos from my collection without deleting them off my zune

Awesome, it worked! A thousand thanks to you both, oranges and Spryboy!

NP rhymes. i wish more people would try this and stop complaining about the problem.

Sorry about the confusion with "next" I should have worded that better.

For anyone else having problems with this, you need to drag the files from windows explorer to the icon, not drag the files from the zune software.

Creative, I'll post this in my thread as another workaround to the sync issue.

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Zune MVP
Contributor, http://www.insidethecircle.net