Could not find this item - when deleting files

Thanks for this thoughtful forum. Nothing worked for me until I tried the DelinvFile tool recommended by galmeida.

It worked when all else failed!

tachy said:

I know this is a bit late, but I found a quick workaround:

1) Open a Command Prompt.
2) Browse to the folder containing the buggy file.
3) Type 'dir /x' to obtain the 8.3 formatted filename.
4) Delete the file using the 8.3 filename, e.g. 'del NEWDOC~1.DOC'

Hope this information may spread and help other users with the same problem.

I tried everything else THIS WAS THE ONLY THING THAT WORKED!

I found the solution!!

Use DelinvFile.

DelinvFile - Utility for Deleting Invalid Files and Folders

galmeida said:

Try the DelinvFile tool. Search with google and install it. It worked for me perfectly when NOTHING worked before.

BR, galmeida

THANK YOU SO MUCH galmedia, DelinvFile really works, finally

galmeida said:

Try the DelinvFile tool. Search with google and install it. It worked for me perfectly when NOTHING worked before.

BR, galmeida

Cheers, galmeida. This tool worked perfectly whereas every other method provided failed.

tachy said:

I know this is a bit late, but I found a quick workaround:

1) Open a Command Prompt.
2) Browse to the folder containing the buggy file.
3) Type 'dir /x' to obtain the 8.3 formatted filename.
4) Delete the file using the 8.3 filename, e.g. 'del NEWDOC~1.DOC'

Hope this information may spread and help other users with the same problem.

This worked for me too. It was a folder I had to remove and rmdir did it.

There is another solution which worked perfectly for me. Using an elevated Command Prompt ("Run as Administrator") do a forced 'remove directory' command on the containing folder. This is detailed here: Seven Forums Thread - Remove a Directory

NOTE: My original problem was a couple of strange left over files, in two different sub directories, that were 1kb each, with names likes ._mittleshift - perhaps a hangover from an old Apple Mac directory. I tried everything listed in this thread to move or delete the files/folders/parent directory, except for the DelinvFile application. These were NOT locked by any process and nothing to do with rebooting/memory. I had been trying things for 6 months before I got annoyed enough to work on getting rid of it once and for all. Finally the hard Remove Directory (RD /S /Q "Directory") in Command Prompt removed it completely without any problems.

galmeida said:

Try the DelinvFile tool. Search with google and install it. It worked for me perfectly when NOTHING worked before.

BR, galmeida

spot on! thanks very much folks, I've had this problems for weeks and nothing else works - happy to get those rogue files out of my system! and thanks to DelinvFile for the free trial (3 files)