local folder cannot open cannot delete

Hi all!

So i know, back on my old win installation, there used to be a folder i couldnt access and couldnt delete or anything.

Now, for other reasons, i reinstalled windows with a remaining windows.old folder.

Everything from there can be deleted (which i already did) except this very "special" folder, which no starts to bother me.

I cannot access it/rename it/delete it.
Win says the path is not existing. This folder has, however, never been a network ressource.

Ive tried:
- win secure mode
- a tool called unlocker

no luck.

The path is not very long or anything.
C:\Windows.old\Users\username\Bilder\Italien Sommer 2010\Verena
In this folder, there is a folder called "29.09" which i cannot do anything with.

the weirdest thing:
when checking the properties:
- type is Folder
- no path is shown
- windows suggests to handle this like a windows DLL shell


Pretty pretty please help me out!

sorry for taking so much time and thank you for the answer!


So win asks me whether I do want to delete the folder "Verena". I confirm. nothing happens.

When trying to access the folder contained in Verena, it says it cannot find the path.

In a command prompt, specifying a file or folder to delete using it's 8.3 name seems to resolve issues like these. So use a long path naming convention to implicitly convert a path to its shortened name. And use the rd command to delete this Verena directory in question.

The following command should remove the Verena directory and its contents.

Code:

rd "\\?\<DropFolderHere>" /s

However, before you try that... I'd like to know if specifying a Win32 device path instead would achieve the effect. I'd appreciate it, Shmokkk, if you could try the command below first.

Code:

rd "\\.\<DropFolderHere>" /s

Solved!

Code:

rd "\\.\<DropFolderHere>" /s

already did the job.


One more thing though:
I could not delete the folder in normal mode, since win answered, the folder would be used by another process. WTH?
So i went to safe mode.
The Verena-folder was not even shown in safe mode.
I could, however, remove the upper folder and then windows.old, too.


Thanks a lot!
Can you tell me, what the hell this might have been? Infection?

Glad you got it solved.

Did you use the command, or did you delete the folder through Explorer in safe mode?

shmokkk said:

Can you tell me, what the hell this might have been?

This "Could not find item error" is not uncommon. Usually the problem fixes itself after a few refreshes of Explorer, or after a reboot of the machine. Though what actually causes this problem is rather unknown.

On rare occasions where rebooting or refreshing doesn't work, deleting the item thorugh the command prompt using it's 8.3 name seems to remove the problem file 90% of the time.

shmokkk said:

I could not delete the folder in normal mode, since win answered, the folder would be used by another process.

The program Unlocker was created to deal with this exact problem. Did you get this message before and did you use the Unlocker tool then? Did the tool find a handle? If so, I'm not sure why it would fail to delete the folder. Maybe a combination of a bugged folder and a file handle locking it.

Pyprohly said:

Did you use the command, or did you delete the folder through Explorer in safe mode?

I used the command while being in safe mode. When i tried without safe mode before, it didnt work and win instead told me, the folder would be in use by another process.

Pyprohly said:

The program Unlocker was created to deal with this exact problem. Did you get this message before and did you use the Unlocker tool then? Did the tool find a handle? If so, I'm not sure why it would fail to delete the folder. Maybe a combination of a bugged folder and a file handle locking it.

I did not get this message before, since i never tried using the 8.3 name or even the console at all.
I did use Unlocker, though:
- in normal mode: unlocker said it would have deleted the file, but didnt.
- in safe mode: I couldnt get unlocker to run o_0