I have a number of files on my Windows 2000 server that I
cannot delete. Some of them have names with strange
characters and some do not. This stems from a problem we
had about a year ago when our RAID controller went down.
We were able to reinstall the operating system on the C:
drive and recover the data from the D: and E: drives;
however, there were some files that were corrupted and I
am unable to erase them. How can I erase them? I have
tried chkdsk /f on the volume. That did not work. Then I
tried to delete the files from the command prompt. That
did not work either. One of the files I tried to delete
was named 113?1D2?|wd. The other file I was unable to do
anything with through the command prompt since it contains
characters which do not exist on the keyboard. Does
anyone know how to get rid of these files?

Hi, Allen.

I know nothing of servers, but in Win2K Pro, this usually works:

Open a "DOS" window. Use the Dir command with the /x switch to show a
directory with an additional column. This new column, before the LFNs,
shows the SFN (Short File Name, also known as the 8.3 filename) for any file
or folder with a name that does not fit the 8.3 rules. Use the SFN with
normal DOS commands (del, ren, rd, etc.) to deal with the rogue file. As
usual in DOS, just type the command followed by /? to see a mini-Help file
for that command: dir /?, for example.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(E-Mail Removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP

"Allen Heim" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:048e01c38d0a$e86cce20$(E-Mail Removed)...
> I have a number of files on my Windows 2000 server that I
> cannot delete. Some of them have names with strange
> characters and some do not. This stems from a problem we
> had about a year ago when our RAID controller went down.
> We were able to reinstall the operating system on the C:
> drive and recover the data from the D: and E: drives;
> however, there were some files that were corrupted and I
> am unable to erase them. How can I erase them? I have
> tried chkdsk /f on the volume. That did not work. Then I
> tried to delete the files from the command prompt. That
> did not work either. One of the files I tried to delete
> was named 113?1D2?|wd. The other file I was unable to do
> anything with through the command prompt since it contains
> characters which do not exist on the keyboard. Does
> anyone know how to get rid of these files?