Hi Margaret, it sounds like you are completely lost.
I suspect your Windows laptop has loads of shortcuts to all the programs you use frequently and that you don’t “get under the bonnet much” so to speak.
I have needed to make certain assumptions due to the way you have stated what you are experiencing with your tablet so I am going to be boringly detailed so that we both understand what the other is trying to communicate.
If this comes across as patronising then I apologise, but clearly in metaphorical terms we have been using different languages and you have found me a bit techy so I will try to keep it in simple terms.
Taking point 1 from your last major post: “Hi please can someone help me I am having transferring games to the sd card i click the check box and move to sd card but have put the card into the laptop are there are files on there Images Lost /dir Music other files record sounds and video but they are all empty except for one whcih kis the lost dir which says 512file type.” Firstly, was the SD card empty when first you put it into your laptop?
If it wasn’t then I suggest you put the card back into your laptop to see if there is anything on it that you want to keep
(I doubt this from your description) if so, drag and drop what you want to preserve into a new folder on your laptop which I suggest you name “fromscroll” and then delete everything else from the card so you know it is absolutely empty.
Taking your second point:“I bought a new card in case there was something wrong with the card and have moved a couple of games and have now put the new card into the laptop and there is one file now come up lost dir with nothing else”This is absolutely correct and shows that your tablet has recognised the external sd card and prepared it for use.
At this time I am suggesting to leave the folder named “LOST.DIR” alone and don’t worry about it as this is used by the system. Do not delete it or any files that may get deposited inside it. In fact it is best if you simply ignore it all together as you don’t need to go there to make things work.Taking your third point:“If you go into the file manager installed on the scroll essential you have an awful lot of different folders if u click on the LOST DIR in the file manager you have some things that look have downloaded one is 312690 4.00 kb rw by the side there’s 13 of them if you click on one if you tap on one you have a box that comes up text audio video image.”(part1) When you use any file manager to browse your data storage you will always see an awful lot of folders and usually unless you know exactly what they are, you should leave them alone as messing about with files you don’t understand is a sure-fire way to land you in a lot more trouble than you are experiencing now.
This includes the “LOST.DIR” until you learn what it is.
(Part 2) The file/s you refer to “312690 4.00 kb rw by the side there’s 13 of them if you click on one if you tap on one you have a box that comes up text audio video image.”“LOST.DIR” is a folder which holds files that were created during the boot up process of your tablet by something called the “File System Check (or FSC). These are files which have become corrupted because perhaps you may have removed your SD card while it was still being written to or perhaps suffered a power disruption - which causes corrupted or broken files which are then stored with numbers for their name inside the "LOST.DIR."
If you knew exactly what you were looking for and needed to recover something urgent you could attempt some recovery work on these files.(for the experts only)
(Part 3) You normally don’t need to worry at all about these "LOST.DIR" files unless there are hundreds of them which would indicate a problem with the files and applications on the device. You could remove the folder but if you do delete the "LOST.DIR" folder the mount process will automatically recreate it on boot-up during the new “File System Check” (FSC). When files are written to the LOST.DIR it indicates that something was found to be wrong with your file system at some point. (android is often quite unstable and throws fits which also cause these files to be created.)
(Part4)I have explained how these numbered files in the "LOST.DIR" are created automatically by the system. The file with 4.00 kb rw you refer to at the side of it simply indicates the file size (in your example 4 kilo-bytes or Kb) and the rw simply means that the file can be read “r” and written to “w”
Taking your 4th point you say:“if you click on one if you tap on one you have a box that comes up text audio video image.
if you go onto the file manager at the top it says mnt/sdcard and you have different icons on the top of the screen in file manager.
I also have in file manager scoreloop more exchange 2 items not sure if these should be there.”Clicking on one of these files within the LOST.DIR gives you a dialogue box asking how you want the file treated – i.e. is it a text based file? Or an audio – sound based or music file? A video file or a picture-image? Android asks this because it does not recognise the file and does not have a program associated with it to make it work (open). If you knew the file was a film you would choose video.
If you knew it was a written help file you might choose text and audio for music etc. Additionally, when you have chosen the file type, android may well present another dialogue menu asking you which app you want to use to open it if you have more than one installed. For example if it is a video it might ask if you want to use gallery or a video player if you have a 3rd party video player installed.
(Part2) Where you saw /mnt/sdcard tells me that you were looking at the internal sd card so any files you copied from your laptop onto the external sd card will not be found simply because you are looking in the wrong place.
You say you have different icons at the top in file manger. I am assuming at this stage that you are still using the stock file manager that was installed when you bought the Essential.
These icons are placed and described thus starting from left to right.
1st icon - Left arrow = Back button
2nd icon - Drive icon = the tablet’s internal sdcard storage
3rd icon - SD Card = your external (removable sd card) known in the file structure as /mnt/extsd
4th icon – usb = connected storage such as a usb memory stick (O.T.G lead required see further down)
5th icon – video, = shows the video files on your tablet
6th icon - toolbox = toolbox options - best left alone until you have learned what they do.
7th icon – is for the selected file actions – Attach – Delete- Copy – Move
Hoepfully now you can find your external sdcard as it is the third icon along counting from the top left when using the standard file manager that came installed when you bought your tablet.
The left-facing arrow is the back button – tapping this from the opening screen does nothing as there is nothing to go back to. However, if you choose a folder –shall we say – the DCIM folder and tap on it you will see 2 more folders inside. These folders are where your video’s and pictures are stored that you take using the tablet’s inbuilt camera.
If you browse to these folders, at the top the status bar will show you /mnt/sdcard/DCIM. This is important because it tells you where you are within your tablet’s storage. The storage (all the folders and files) are stored in a structure called a directory tree and the easiest way to describe this is to compare it with a heritage family tree with your ancestors at the top and all their progeny branching out beneath. If you tap the left facing arrow (the first icon) this will take you back one folder or last movement - a little like going up a family tree toward the beginning.
On your tablet the directory tree hierarchy begins with a forward slash “/” then (in this example) /mnt – which stands for mount and refers to other than the actual operating system read only memory (rom). then is /mnt/sdcard which refers to a section of what is called the nand or onboard memory within the tablet. Nand is split up (partitioned) into sections (partitions) and one part of it is named "sdcard". This is for data within/on the tablet NOT data on your removable External sd card. Next is /mnt/sdcard/DCIM.
DCIM is the folder we browsed to and which contains 2 folders called 100ANDRO and Camera which hold the videos and pictures taken using the tablet’s internal camera.
Using this knowledge of the directory tree I can show you how to get to your external sd card when using the stock browser (I should forget about e.s. file explorer for now until you are more experienced.)
In the stock file manager the easy way is to tap the 3rd icon along from the left or you can browse to this: /mnt/extsd (this is what shows in the taskbar when you choose the 3rd icon along.)
RE O.T.G (On The Go) this is a special lead which hopefully you got with your tablet. It is a short lead with fullsize female usb (socket) one end and male (plug) mini usb the other end. You MUST use this on your tablet when you host external devices or they won't work(Part 3) You state:
“I also have in file manager scoreloop more exchange 2 items not sure if these should be there.”These files have been created through games which you have installed on your tablet and they are quite normal. From the phrase “scoreloop” I might venture to guess that you have installed “Cut-the-Rope" or something similar as it is this which has created the "scoreloop" file/s.
From where your level of knowledge stands at the moment I would advise you to leave all these files and folders alone or perhaps look but don’t touch.
This is why I suggested that when you use your external (removable) sd card that you create a folder which you name yourself with a name which is descriptive and easy to understand when you see it again. You could use a naming convention that you are already used to from Windows such as:
My_Pictures
My_Documents
My_Videos Or if you want to be even more specific so you know that you definitely and deliberately created these folders you name them like this:
Mags_Pics
Mags_Docs
Mags_VidsUsing folders is quite important in planning how to use your external
(removable) sd card as if you simply drag and drop files to it willy-nilly you will never be able to find anything - so always use a naming convention that is easily understood. A good test is to ask yourself – “would a stranger understand what that folder is for?” If you can answer yes then this will help you not get lost or confused as to what is what when using file manager.
When you see folders or files on your external
(removable) sd card that you have not put there, leave them alone and don’t worry about them, they are just the system and apps doing their thing. The only other thing to mention about using the external sd card is the ability to make applications use it instead of the system storage. A good example of this is if you use a third party video player for your films on your external
(removable) sd card you may find that when you fire up the video player and press the menu button there are options you can set to tell the player where your video files are. Alternatively, some players ask at installation if they can scan the tablet to find the files for you.
This is very useful but even with this system you may need to tell the player where you want it to scan. i.e. either /mnt/sdcard for the internal storage or /mnt/extsd for the external
(removable) sd card.
If you have managed to read this far without falling to sleep then you have covered a lot of ground.
Taking your 5th point:"Could ysomeone please help as dont whether something has gone wrong or how do i put the games onto the sd card do
dont know if i have to do something else to do get the sd working.”Your question asks how to put games on the (removable) sd card – the answer is that if you mean the games you are downloading through Google play then you can’t! (If you want to put video files or pictures on the external
(removable) sd cards then re-read my previous post about using the long usb lead and your Windows laptop.)
Many people think that putting an external sd card in their tablet will increase the room to install apps – this is untrue and something which many users get caught out with due to the manufacturers description saying memory expandable to 32Gb. Unfortunately you can only increase your data storage with an sd card not the internal system storage which remains completely separate from an external
(removable) sd card unless you can master some very complex hacking wizardry.
When you install an app using Google play store on your tablet (just like your HTC phone) it usually gets installed directly onto the system storage (or phone) but you sometimes see an option to move some apps to the sd card. Unfortunately on your Scroll Essential this is a section of memory in your tablet and not your
(removable) external sd card.
If you try to drag and drop games files onto your external (removable) sd card you break vital system links and the apps will no longer work and you would fill your LOST.DIR with more unwanted files to use up your valuable storage.
Taking your 6th point:“Hi i have come back to you as well regarding my flash player which is installed on the scroll it seems to have stop working but cannot download it again from the Google play website as it says it has been installed if you click on this it just says settings and nothing else. I have tvcatchup installed and that won’t play now presumably because of the flash player they say that there is not an up-to-date version of this anymore,
would u know anywhere where i can install this again as i cant play my tvcatchup programmes.”If you are running Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0.3 or 4.0.4 and not Gingerbread 2.3.4 then it seems likely that your Essential is powered by an allwinner A10 cortex a8 processor. You can find out which operating system you are using by going to settings and scroll to the bottom to “about tablet” tap this and you should see either 2.3.4 or 4.0.3 or 4.0.4 as the operating system. If this is 4.0.3 or 4.0.4 then I suggest you uninstall your flash player.
Go to setting, apps and find Adobe Flash player and uninstall it.
Then reboot the tablet and re-install Flash player once more using the download from Google play store.
I would also do the same thing with tvcatchup except this time choose "Clear data" first and then uninstall, reboot and re-install.
If when you look at “about tablet” and if it says 2.3.4 for the Operating system then it may be debatable which Central Processing Unit your tablet has as the early 2.3.4 Essential was based on a telechips CPU which does not support Flash and which would perhaps explain why tvcatchup and Flashplayer won’t work on your tablet,
unless you have had them working in the past? in which case you have the later modelIt is also possible that "tvcatchup’s" latest update has made it incompatible with your tablet which is what happened to me when I was running Gingerbread 2.3.4 - I can’t help much more with this aspect until I know what your Operating system is and whether you have had "tvcatchup" working in the past..
Last of all, you mentioned that you were using the Googleplay web site when it told you that Flash player is installed.
If you are definitely accessing the Google playstore through the web browser then this will always tell you what you have installed, even sometimes after you uninstall it from the tablet. You will do much better using the Playstore app but I don't know if you have it on your Essential as you can't simply download it. Try a long press on an empty part of the home screen and you should activate a menu asking you if you want to change the wallpaper and also you should see widgets. Touch widgets and then scroll through them to see if there is one for Google Play store or Google market. If you do see one then press it to put it on your home screen and use this to get your apps rather than using a web browser which will often tell you an app is downloading but then it never arrives. This does not happen when using the Google playstore app correctly.
Thats your lot. I'm of to A & E now for some therapy for repetitive strain injury.....