Deleting zone.identifier files

Here is a screenshot of my Downloads folder. You can see that for a lot of audio files, there is a Zone.Identifier file. Don't mind the .mxm files.

Oh okay.

I guess I've never seen them separate from the file itself. You tried deleting the Zone.Identifier files, but they don't delete?

Also one possibility to consider: Whatever program that is creating the mxm files could also be the program that's extracting the zone.identifier files from the mp3s. Does that sound possible? You can check and see on that

pepanee said:

Oh okay.

I guess I've never seen them separate from the file itself. You tried deleting the Zone.Identifier files, but they don't delete?

Deleting the Zone.Identifier files separately does work! I have done this for my Downloads folder now, however, these Zone.Identifier files are all over the place throughout my drive; looking them up and deleting them per folder would be a drag. If it comes down to this, because there is no different solution, I will (have to) do this.

Using File Explorer, open a window to: C:\
In the top right corner of the window where you can search, copy and paste this (yes, there is a 'star' infront of the 'dot'): *.identifier

Look at all the results and delete them.

I wonder what's causing those files to be created. You must have some 3rd party application that's running in the background that extracts those files from the mp3s and other files that you get.

Go to Task Manager and see all the applications that are running under Details. You might recognize programs that you installed that you dont want. You should uninstall programs that you don't actively use.

pepanee said:

Using File Explorer, open a window to: C:\
In the top right corner of the window where you can search, copy and paste this (yes, there is a 'star' infront of the 'dot'): *.identifier

Look at all the results and delete them.

I wonder what's causing those files to be created. You must have some 3rd party application that's running in the background that extracts those files from the mp3s and other files that you get.

Go to Task Manager and see all the applications that are running under Details. You might recognize programs that you installed that you dont want. You should uninstall programs that you don't actively use.

The search and delete worked! Thanks a lot :)
I think I might know why those files are there. I've recovered my files in a very circuitous fashion. This was necessary due to the fact that my old HDD wasn't recognized by any computer. After extensive searching and troubleshooting, I found out that this was due to some weird partitioning (my PC thought that there were partitions on the HDD adding up to 657 GB, the HDD is however only 500 GB. It still recognized and read an old partition that wasn't there anymore - or so I thought)

Thanks for your help!

You're welcome

Oddly, right clicking my zone.identifier files did not work. I would get some kind of error. Otherwise, I would use the "everything" program to search my entire for all files with this extension and delete them at once. What did work for me was to copy all of the files on the drive with the zone.identifier files to another drive. This left all the zone. identifier files behind. After that, I could still not delete them from the affected drive. Even doing a normal format did not work. So I had to use diskpart to clean the drive and after that all was good. Was able to move the files back to the original drive and no more zone.identifiers.