The folder that wouldnt die...

[locutus12]

i have a folder on my hard drive, theres nothing in it, it shows as 0 bytes but i cant get into it... i cant delete it, i cant remove it before boot up, i cant get wrid of it using a cmd prompt. ive had it for the last year but now ive got a new drive and ive just ghosted on to it but alass ive also managed to copy the un movable file, (which at least tells me it wasnt a bad sector or some such on my old drive)

any clues ?

 

[Jonny69]

I think it might be NTFS encrypted so you don't have permission to alter or view it. You can try and take ownership of it, see if this helps: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=308421

 

[Greenlizard0]

You could try unlocker - http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/ to get rid of it if you fancy?

 

[locutus12]

tried unlocker and tried to take ownership, remember ive had it for a year your gonna need to think outside the box to solve this one...

 

[Ole Ftang]

There's a utility called Move On Boot which might let you delete the folder. Worked for me once with a file I couldn't delete.

Hope it does the job.

 

[locutus12]

tried it, no luck gonna copy stuff off the drive and format the bugger

 

[MarcLister]

tried it, no luck gonna copy stuff off the drive and format the bugger

I was going to suggest that. I would have suggested an unlocking prog like Unlocker or using a DOS prompt but you'd already done that so inevitably a format would have been the last option.

 

[locutus12]

its just so odd, the folder is 0 bytes, its not locked, im a system admin, there are no bad sectors or lost clusters. its just strange

 

[PinkPig]

Is it some particular special folder or one you've created yourself? Windows has oddities like the unremoveable "microsoft frontpage" folder.

 

[MarcLister]

Is it some particular special folder or one you've created yourself? Windows has oddities like the unremoveable "microsoft frontpage" folder.

You can get rid of those.

 

[locutus12]

i didnt create it, one day it was just there, a random bunch of numbers and letters, about 5 folders deep, each with nothing in them, each with a random name...

well in the process of merging a partition ive destroyed my C drive D drive and lost about 8 months of stuff thank god i backed up most of it... grrrr. but at least i will be able to get wrid of that blooming folder...

 

[sfx]

i didnt create it, one day it was just there, a random bunch of numbers and letters, about 5 folders deep, each with nothing in them, each with a random name...

well in the process of merging a partition ive destroyed my C drive D drive and lost about 8 months of stuff thank god i backed up most of it... grrrr. but at least i will be able to get wrid of that blooming folder...

How do you mean random file names? Can you post the names of them?

Also you do not happen to run a FTP server on your machine do you? As there is a method of naming folders to make them undeletable, a lot of people who upload stuff to public FTP servers use this method to stop sys admins deleting their stuff.

sfx

 

[locutus12]

no ftp servers were running and the drives have now been formatted

 

[leezer3]

What you want here is a LiveCD with NTFS support. Plenty of them out there, and they pay no regard to the Windoze issues.
BartPE should also shift it without too much problems.
Sounds like something created by an app thats still on your drive to me. It would't be a an AV Virus vault folder or something would it?
Having seen the above post on FTP servers, the reserved filenames are legacy behaviour from DOS - MS's KB article on removing these:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=120716

-Leezer-