Need help deleting directory (windows and not virus problem)

rayik · Dec 1, 2004

I have a directory on my hdd that I can not delete. That directory is empty (all files in it were deleted ok). When I try to delete the directory this message appears:

Cannot delete file: Cannot read from the source file or disk.

Any suggestions on how to delete the directory. (I've tried turning off explorer and deleting from a command prompt within windows - but didn't work.)

Thanks for the help.

dicecca112 · Dec 1, 2004

have you tried restarting and then checking if it is gone. That happens to me on my comp, because its slow as hell, and after a few seconds to a minute it disappears. What folder is it, what is it from, and is the version of windows correct as it is in your profile?

I.M.O.G. · Dec 1, 2004

If you go into its parent folder and press F5 or select view>refresh from the menu, you will likely find that the folder is already gone, and that is why it cannot read from the source.

Restarting would likely do the trick also.

nahmus · Dec 1, 2004

you might also try a scandisk. Maybe the folder is located on a bad part of the disk and thats why it can't be deleted. Scandisk should at least flag it as bad.

rayik · Dec 1, 2004

It's a win 2k sp4 machine (and not the one in my sig).

All of your suggestions did not work. Refreshing the folder didn't work. Restarting the machine did not work. Scandisk ran (outside of windows) and showed no errors. Even going into safe mode and trying to delete did not work (and I didn't expect it to.)

Here's a picture with answers to questions:

nahmus · Dec 1, 2004

hmmm thats wierd. can you bring up the permissions on the file? just curious on that point. The only other thing that I can suggest is to download an image of EBCD (emergency boot cd) This will let you boot into linux and access the filesystem. You could probably delete it from there (if its NTFS) and if its fat32 maybe you can load the disk into another machine and try deleting it from there.

David · Dec 1, 2004

What about using the repair console? Will that let you nuke the file if you boot from your CD and go into the repair console.

I.M.O.G. · Dec 1, 2004

While I don't usually like things like this, I don't see anything blatantly wrong with it, and perhaps it might help here:

http://www.deletefxpfiles.com/index2.html

nahmus · Dec 1, 2004

thats a cool program IMOG. My friends work server was tagged by a download group and they could not get rid of the directories. I had to go there with EBCD and pop the directory. they had 32gig of movies and other downloads. this looks like it would have done the trick.

Ascii2 · Dec 2, 2004

What type of media is the directory seemfully located on?

Check permissions.

Have you tried removing the directory from the command line?

rayik · Dec 2, 2004

Thanks IMOG. Delete FXP files worked just fine.

I don't think it was anything malicious. I created the folder myself. I put files in it. I could delete the files from the folder. Just couldn't delete the directory.

I could not check permissions for that folder. There was no tab for security for that folder. Only tabs were for "general" and "sharing."

I've had this happen before on this machine. All other times I've opened a command prompt, shut down explorer.exe and then deleted from the command prompt.

I'll watch this hdd to see if it's going bad.

Thank you for all the suggestions.

Need help deleting directory (windows and not virus problem)

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