Comments on: Cannot delete a folder

By: adamgrat

adamgrat — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 19:42:23 +0000

you may use longpath tool to delete the folder.

By: eastcoastguy

eastcoastguy — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 16:20:55 +0000

Ah,

Jonsjava you made me think. A trailing space caused the duplicate folders. The GUI doesn’t show it.

My solution was:

rmdir “\\?\c:\path_to_file_that contains a trailing space.txt ”

Cause 5 in KB 320081 has this info.

The full URL is = http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=320081

Thanks,

By: jonsjava

jonsjava — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 15:00:58 +0000

It’s simple enough to make 2 folders “with the same name” in xp.

In this example, lets make a folder that has no name and no icon

first, right click on the desktop
go to New -> Folder
clear out “New Folder” from the name (and whatever else they put there)
Now, for the name: hold down then type “0160″
Next, right click on the new “no name” folder, and go to Properties.
go to Customization
now, click on “Change Icon…”
scroll to the right, until you come across a blank area (there is 3 next to the “Padlock”, after the Star)
click on that blank space.
click “OK”
Click “Apply”
close the properties box
Now, the folder is invisible.

Everybody from the good old DOS days remembers the “hidden character” and we also remember how that went away with windows 95. Well, the hidden character back then was created by holding down and pressing “255″. Windows 95 turned that into a “_” so we could see it. The new “hidden character” is generated with the “0160″.

For those who don’t know: a file system does not know how to allow folders to actually exist in the same directory with the exact same name, but the work around would be for me to create a folder named “Test”
and then create a folder named “Test0160″, which would make a folder like “Test”, but it has a hidden character at the end.You wouldn’t be able to detect the last character, because the system just won’t show it.

By: eastcoastguy

eastcoastguy — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 15:11:04 +0000

What worris me here is the fact Windows created a folder that has the same name as another folder. In our scenerio we have C:\folder and C:\folder. Both have different contents and the bogus one cannot be deleted or renamed. I’m worried a delete on boot would delete the wrong folder.

By: ikara1

ikara1 — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 07:04:10 +0000

Since you have tried most of the obvious ways that might work for you.
Maybe you would like to try a small program called “MoveonBoot”. from GiPo
A feature that is handy is the menu item it places in your R/click menu.
Delete File on next Boot.

By: eastcoastguy

eastcoastguy — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 15:54:09 +0000

I tried all of those. I even ran Chkdsk and had no luck. Chkdsk runs really slow with 89 million files. For now we reformatted the volume and started over.

By: produkt

produkt — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 17:41:27 +0000

Here’s a silly answer??? try renaming the folder and then try to delete it.

By: eastcoastguy

eastcoastguy — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 15:12:17 +0000

This is on a server. The problem is it created a duplicate folder with the same name within the same directory. I briefly tried safe mode but had no luck.

I am a domain admin and still cannot delete it. Booting from the CD may not work since this is on san disk and needs HBA drivers to be loaded.

By: tbitner

tbitner — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 14:23:08 +0000

Can you delete it if you boot from a CD and examine the disk? Maybe the group policy is hiding the tabs, can you login as Domain Admin and delete it? Is this file local on your machine or on a server?