I'm a fairly new DO user, and I'm looking for a way to search a folder (or drive) for all files with Alternate Data Streams containing Zone Information.
I've found a couple of specialised programs which do that, but they don't work exactly as I'd like, and I'm wondering if DO has a way of filtering files by choosing particular ADS contents.
If I can find all the files matching that particular ADS attribute, I would like to be able to select all the files and "bulk-remove" the attribute. (This would result in the disappearance of that pesky "Unblock" button from the Properties dialogs of those files, as well as the prevention of the Windows warning when attempting to open such files).
I have already researched how to use Group Policy to turn off the Zone Information for downloaded files, so I'm fairly sure that no new downloaded files will contain it, but I'd like to clean up all the older files in my various storage drives, just in case any of them are still "blocked."
Does DO have any way of doing this by some kind of filtered search? The info I can find in the DO Help file mostly seems to deal with the various kinds of metadata contained in multimedia files.
Any help will be much appreciated.
Thanks and regards
Christopher Souter
(Sydney, Australia)
There is a program called AlternateStreamView that can find all of the files that have alternate streams. You can then select them in the search results list and then delete them. Here's the program's page:
Both searching and changing the Zone Identifier could be done using scripting.
Here's an example in VBScript showing how to read and write the Zone Identifier on a file.
Turning that into something that can be used in Opus could be done in a couple of ways. You could have a button that runs a script that searches all the files below the current folder and removes any zone identifiers it finds automatically.
Alternatively, if you want to see the search results before anything is changed, a script column could be added which reports the zone identifier of each file, and you could then use that column with the Find Panel. The same script could also add a script command to set or clear the zone identifier on all selected files, to be used on the search results.
If you're already familiar with VBScript or JScript then we can help with any missing questions. If you're not, I or someone else might be able to write something for you, although I can't promise I'll be able to do it and it'll depend on free time.
Maybe the tool SomeYoungGuy linked above does what you need already, in which case a script isn't needed, but if there are no tools out there then it's something Opus should be able to do with a bit of scripting.
@SomeYoungGuy: Many thanks! It works nicely. I particularly like the ability to sort (ascending or descending) the files on any column header. It would be nice if it also included the ability to filter the search for a particular type of data stream, (in my case, zone.identifier), but it has worked very well.
[quote="leo"]Both searching and changing the Zone Identifier could be done using scripting.
Here's an example in VBScript showing how to read and write the Zone Identifier on a file.
You could have a button that runs a script that searches all the files below the current folder and removes any zone identifiers it finds automatically.
If you're already familiar with VBScript or JScript then we can help with any missing questions. If you're not, I or someone else might be able to write something for you, although I can't promise I'll be able to do it and it'll depend on free time.
Maybe the tool SomeYoungGuy linked above does what you need already[/quote]
@leo: I'm familiar neither with VBScript nor JScript, not being a developer of any sort, but, because I've already discovered how to prevent Windows from adding the Zone ID in the first place, I don't think I need to bother anyone to write a script for me. All I really needed to do was to remove the ZoneID streams from any files that had been downloaded before I edited the relevant Group Policy. I now have no files with ZoneIDs on any drives, and that pesky "Unblock" button is now gone from all the Properties notebooks! It was a "one-off" operation, which I doubt that I'll ever need again.
Many thanks to you both for all your help!
Best regards to all
Christopher Souter
(Sydney, Australia)
It was a "one-off" operation, which I doubt that I'll ever need again.