Unable to delete files until...

[Kramer]

Hi. I've had a really hard time trying delete certain files.

I tried deleting them one by one. I tried deleting the parent
directory.

I made sure that I owned the file. I tried the windows shell and
'cmd'. I rebooted and tried again--no luck.

Then I rebooted into safe mode--no luck. I stopped the explorer.exe
process--no luck. I wrote a small perl script which attempted to open
each file for writing and reported that the open failed for each file.

Then I went into cygwin and typed 'rm -rf <parent dir>' and *poof*
they were all deleted.

What happened? Why did all of these other attempts fail and cygwin
succeed?

Why can't standard Windows tools handle this situation?

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Hi. I've had a really hard time trying delete certain files.

I tried deleting them one by one. I tried deleting the parent
directory.

I made sure that I owned the file. I tried the windows shell and
'cmd'. I rebooted and tried again--no luck.

Then I rebooted into safe mode--no luck. I stopped the explorer.exe
process--no luck. I wrote a small perl script which attempted to open
each file for writing and reported that the open failed for each file.

Then I went into cygwin and typed 'rm -rf <parent dir>' and *poof*
they were all deleted.

What happened? Why did all of these other attempts fail and cygwin
succeed?

Why can't standard Windows tools handle this situation?

Since you don't tell us what you see when you try to
delete these files, we cannot answer your question.

 

[Kramer]

Since you don't tell us what you see when you try to
delete these files, we cannot answer your question.

access denied.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

access denied.

This sounds like a permission issue. Check permissions
and owner when it happens again.

 

[Kramer]

This sounds like a permission issue. Check permissions
and owner when it happens again.

Did that. Not a permissions/ownership issue.

 

[ANONYMOUS]

Did that. Not a permissions/ownership issue.

Could it one of those tmp files or dat files used by windows?

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Did that. Not a permissions/ownership issue.

Next time it happens, try to delete the file while in a Command
Prompt. If unsuccessful, make a note of the exact error
message, then post the output of cacls.exe for the problem
file.

 

[Uncle Grumpy]

Hi. I've had a really hard time trying delete certain files.

Would it cause you some grief if you listed the files you are trying
to delete?

 

[Plato]

Hi. I've had a really hard time trying delete certain files.

http://www.bootdisk.com/utility.htm
GENERAL FILE UTILITIES
Stubborn File Deleters