-----Original Message-----
Hi, Glenn.
RD /s is not supposed to care if the directory is empty or not. :>( It
should ask, "Are you sure" and, when you answer yes, just wipe out the whole
tree from that directory name on down.
Can you move everything EXCEPT that subdirectory 0200~1 out of the parent
directory into a temporary directory? Then rd /s the parent. Finally,
rename the temporary directory to the name of the now- removed parent.
Depending on what tools you have available, you might want to try harder to
get the true 8.3 filenames. For example, you could make sure your "DOS"
window is a "normal" (not full-screen) window. Then Mark the name of the
directory and Copy it into Notepad or some other text editor so that you can
take a closer look for hidden characters in the name. Your first post
seemed to indicate that filenames have leading spaces, although that was
very hard to tell with the poor formatting of that message. Do you REALLY
have a filename of " E 88585 ", including those leading, embedded and
trailing spaces? What does dir /s show as the SFN for this particular
filename? Does "0200~1" have a leading or trailing space? How about that
no-name directory you mentioned? It HAS to have a name, and the name HAS to
be a valid 8.3 filename - even if it has somehow been hidden from normal
view.
Could you try the dir /x again. This time, use dir /x > dirfile.txt. This
should pipe the output of the dir command to a file. Then look at that
dirfile.txt with Notepad or WordPad or some other editor. Copy a few
representative lines (be sure they include some SFNs) into your next post so
that we can see just what the output looks like.
A favorite prank to play on your buddies back in MS-DOS days was to use a
non-printing character in the filename. These characters might look like a
space onscreen, and were virtually undetectable unless your buddy knew to
look for them.
RC
Hi RC,
When I use the /X parameter on a DIR command it shows the
directory name as 0200~1 but if I try to CD to that
directory I get a message "Access is denied". When I try
to delete the directory with the RD /S command the
message is "The directory is not empty" and it won't
delete. Any other suggestions?
Thanks,
Glenn
-----Original Message-----
Hi, Glenn.
Have you tried the old faithful:
Open a "DOS" window and navigate to the parent of the
bad folder. Type dir
/x to see the SFN (Short File Name - also known as the
8.3 filename) in a
column before the LFN. Then type rd <SFN> /s to remove
the bad folder in
its entirety, including all subdirectories and files.
If that doesn't work, post back with just what you did
and what results you
saw.
RC
message
I have two garbage directories that were f=created by
some unknown source. One of the directories has no name
and show just a folder icon in Windows explorer. The
other directory is called temp and was created as a
sub-
directory within another valid directory. This temp
directory has four more sub-directories within it, all
with garbage names. Our backup software rejects these
files but shows the names. Here is a sample of some of
the file names:
\ I 4035 \ . 5534984 .con 1.9 \ .
6795309 .lpt2 2.94 \. 26146904 .lpt3 3.1
\ I 4035 \ . 5534984 .con 1.9 \ . 6795309 .
2.47 \. 26146904 .aux 3.48
;[[Scan By Somebody i don't wan
\ E 88585 \ . 5534984 .lpt1 2.46 \ .
6795309 .lpt3 3
. %d .lpt1 3.22
When I try to delete these directories, I get the
following message:
Cannot delete file: Cannot read from the source file or
disk.
Can someone please tell me how I can get rid of these
directories? Thanks.