Windows Problem

[CP-PC]

I have a music folder on a seperate 80GB WD SATA drive in my pc. if i right click and go to properties windows tells me there is 2465 files in 223 folders a total of 6.95GB. how ever when i add this folder to WMP11 it only finds 1537 files and only adds 1525 of those it found. there are a couple of problems here. take my Bon Jovi album for instance..... WMP11 only shows a total of 108 files.... my manual count shows 109 files and right clicking on the folder shows 159 files in 8 folders. again doing a manual count i see 109 files. hidden files are set to "Show Hidden Files" if i take it down to ablum level (the bounce album) right click shows 18 files, manual count shows 12 and WMP11 shows 12. i havent done a manual count of ALL songs as this would take ages how ever the windows right click properties window always shows a higher amount of files than there actually should be and a manual count confirms this. and these extra files seem to be hidden. i do have other files with music in else where but have not added these yet but the problem is the same with these folders too. i have norton internet security fully up to date and have done several virus scans and found nothing. i have also got AdAware and this has also found nothing. the music files all play fine but where are these extra files comming from?? and why cant i see them?? going back to the "Bounce" album.... right click shows 18 files in 0 folders size of 64.9MB (68,075,534 bytes) doing a manual count there are only 12 files. if i select these 12 files and right click it shows me 12 files in 0 folders 64.8MB (68,049,547 bytes) so there is a slight difference in actual size but not much at all i have no idea what these files could be or where they have come from.

sorry for the long post but i like to be as precise as possible to try and sort the problem out. not all folders folders are showing this problem for instance my Red Alert 2 Folder shows exactly the same files and size and doing a manual count confirms this. other files that i have so far found have this problem are:
my music
my received files
my video's
stuff to sort folder (although this is only 1 file difference)

i havent looked at the rest yet but im sure there are other files to add to the list. the windows folder on C drive shows 23421 files in 1517 folders 4.33GB and a manual count shows 23258 files in 1490 folders 4.11GB
this seems to be the only folder on c drive thats affected by this. thanks in advanced for your help and idea's

[CP-PC]

forgot to mention im running windows xp pro with sp3 installed and all updates are installed. im running 2x 80GB maxtor 8mb cache ATA133's in raid 0 as C drive. i have a 80GB Western Digital Caviar SE 8MB cache SATA as D drive (my media drive) how ever this 80gb drive is partitioned as 70GB for media (D) and 4.52GB as E drive which has windows 2000 pro installed as a backup/emergency OS

[graystreet]

I haven't experienced the problem you're having but a few things spring to mind:

Have you got scans of the album covers etc., in your music folders, I doubt WMP will read these as valid audio files.

In your folder view settings have you unticked " hide protected operating system files". Windows creates a Thumbs.db, basically a thumbnail db , in the folders file which Windows can see as an operating system file. The creation of this filve can be disabled.

The above are probably unrelated but I thought them worth mentioning.

[CP-PC]

i did not untick that box but i have now and it now looks like i have found the missing files and they are all album art and and thumbnail pics and also a config file called "Desktop" which only contails a few lines which looks like its a link for buying the album (pointless as i already have it lol) but that makes much more sence thanks for that. and would this apply to other folders including the windows directory and other folders im having this problem with? il give it a go. i havent actually scaned any of the album art work its just stuff that WMP11 has automaticaly got its self