"The directory name is invalid" - how to delete this folder?

[basscadet75]

Hey all,

Searched around, didn't find an answer that helps me in my specific
situation.

I recently bought a new Acer laptop with Windows XP Pro pre-installed.
Oddly, it was partitioned with two 45GB FAT32 partitions. I wasn't
happy with this so I used PartitionMagic 8 to repartition it into one
90GB NTFS partition.

During this process, some folders and files apparently became
cross-linked, and these were fixed on my next checkdisk. I haven't had
any problems found by chkdsk since.

However, since then, I have three folders (all music folders, for some
reason) that give me an error saying "The directory name is invalid"
whenever I try to open them or delete them. It doesn't matter if I do
it from the GUI or the command line, or in safe mode. Not
coincidentally, the contents of these three folders are stored in a
"found.000" hidden folder on the root of drive C:, and these contents
are fully intact. I have not moved these files as I'm worried they're
the key to getting these folders working again.

It's no big deal to me to lose these three folders and just create new
ones, but I hate knowing I have folders on my system that I literally
can't do *anything* with. I've tried various utilities (like
DelInvFile) to get rid of them, but no dice. These utilities don't
properly recognize the folders either.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Jeff

 

[Wesley Vogel]

Cause 6: The file name includes an invalid name in the Win32 name space
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=320081#XSLTH3202121122120121120120
from...
You cannot delete a file or a folder on an NTFS file system volume
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=320081


chk files and the Found folders

On Fat formatted volumes.

Chkdsk saves each repaired file in the root folder as a File<nnnn>.chk file,
and each repaired folder in the root folder as a Found.<nnn> folder, where
<n> is a number.

Recovering Lost Clusters on FAT Volumes
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/Windows/XP/all/reskit/en-us/Default.asp?u

rl=/resources/documentation/Windows/XP/all/reskit/en-us/prkd_tro_kbnn.asp

Link is no good anymore!!!

[[Because some repairs on FAT volumes, such as correcting lost clusters
(also known as allocation units) or cross-linked files, change the volume's
file allocation table and can cause data loss, Chkdsk first prompts you with
a confirmation message similar to the following:

10 lost allocation units found in 3 chains.
Convert lost chains to files? (Y/N)

If you press the N key, Windows XP Professional fixes the errors on the
volume but does not save the contents of the lost clusters.

If you press the Y key, Windows XP Professional attempts to identify the
folder to which they belong. If the folder is identified, the lost cluster
chains are saved as files.

If Windows XP Professional cannot identify the folder or if the folder does
not exist, it saves each chain of lost clusters in a folder called
Found.xxx, where xxx is a sequential number starting with 000. If no folder
Found.000 exists, one is created at the root. If one or more sequential
folders called Found.xxx (starting at 000) exist, a folder that uses the
next number in the sequence is created.

Windows XP Professional creates Found.xxx folders as hidden system folders.
To see a list of Found.xxx folders, at the root folder in the command
prompt, type dir /a. For information about viewing hidden system folders in
My Computer or Windows Explorer, see Windows XP Professional Help.

After the storage folder has been identified or created, one or more files
with a name in the format Filennnn.chk are saved. (The first saved file is
named File0000.chk, the second is named File0001.chk, and so on in
sequence.) When Chkdsk finishes, you can examine the contents of these files
with a text editor such as Notepad to see whether they contain any needed
data (if the converted chains came from corrupted binary files, they are of
no value). You can delete the .chk files after you save any useful data.

Caution
Because other programs might create and use files with the .chk extension,
you must be careful to delete only the .chk files that are in the Found.xxx
folders.]]

--
Hope this helps. Let us know.

Wes
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User

In

 

[basscadet75]

Thanks, but no dice. I'd seen a reply referencing most of these things
to a past question, but it seems my situation does not quite apply to
any of these causes.

Cause 1: I have re-set all my permissions on these folders, so it's not
an ACL.

Cause 2: The folders are not being used by any other applications
(anyway, I wouldn't get a "Invalid directory name" error from this)

Cause 3: I have run chkdsk. These problem folders are the result of an
action that chkdsk performed, but chkdsk now reports no problems with
my file system.

Cause 4: These folders are not that deep, and I have other folders in
the same subfolder with subfolders themselves that I can access fine.

Causes 5 and 6: These would seem to be most likely *except* for the
fact that I left out one thing - I copied these folders from my old
laptop to my new one, by way of two other PC's that I backed all my
music up on first (yeah I know, I'm a terrible person for making sure I
don't lose all my music in the process of buying a new PC - which I
apparently almost did!). I can open these folders just fine on every
other computer - just not this one. So it's not the naming of the
folders that's the problem - there's no hidden space or anything there
(unless something weird happened in transferring them from an NTFS
partition to a FAT32 partition and then converting that data back to
NTFS).

Just for clarity's sake (and maybe your own amusement), the actual
names of these folders are "Best of Bowie", "The Chicago Story" and
"Original Broadway Cast" (without the quotes, obviously). Nothing
weird about them. Never had any hidden characters in there either.

Any other ideas? I do appreciate the help, I've just already gone
through all these steps so far.

Jeff

 

[Wesley Vogel]

MANUALLY DELETING STUBBORN FILES
http://aumha.org/a/stubborn.php

You Cannot Delete a File or a Folder
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;320081

How do I delete an "undeletable" file?
http://www.dougknox.com/xp/tips/xp_undeletable_file.htm

Delete A File That Is Seemingly "Undeletable"
http://www.theeldergeek.com/delete_undeletable_file.htm

Delete - Can't Delete Files or Folders
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_d.htm#del

Delete - AVI, MPG... files (access denied error)
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_d.htm

Scroll down to Delete - AVI, MPG... files (access denied error)
---

How To Delete "Undeletable" Files And Folders In XP
http://www.bootdisk.com/xptop20.htm#8

Cannot delete file or folder
[[Sometimes a file cannot be deleted or a folder removed because Windows
says it's open by another program.]]
http://www.michna.com/kb/WxCannotDelete.htm

"Access Denied" Error Message When You Try to Delete a File
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=298345

You Receive an "Access Denied" Error Message When You Delete Folders from a
Mounted Drive
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=319368

How to take ownership of a file or folder in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=308421

--
Hope this helps. Let us know.

Wes
MS-MVP Windows Shell/User

In

 

[Thota Umesh]

do a chkdsk/f command to ur drive this will allow check disk to fix
encountered problems too the scan wud be time consuming but hopefully ur
problems wud be fixed.

Hope this helps...,
Umesh Thota
www.windowsworkshop.com