Help deleting some old folders.

[Egan]

A while back, my computer crashed and I did a partial
format to restore my system. I was hoping this formatting
of my HD would get rid of this ugly, super-long folder that
had been created at some point (couldn't delete by normal
means because its directory path is too long), but this
didn't happen. Instead the ugly folder is now being
considered by windows XP to be an old file. Every time I
run Windows Cleanup, the program now hangs when it tries
(and fails) to compress this file.

As such, my system has gone without a good cleanup for a
few months and I think its starting to affect performance.
Can someone tell me of a way to delete this file? Or
barring that, is there a way to tell the Cleanup program to
skip this file so it doesn't hang?

Here's that super-long file/folder:
C:\Documents and Settings\Egan\My Documents\My Music\My
Music\My Music\My Music\My Music\My Music\My Music\My
Music\My Music\My Music\My Music\My Music\My Music\My
Music\My Music\My Music\My Music\My Music\My Music\My
Music\Noir OST

Thanks.

 

[Scott]

Hi,
did you FDISK it before reformatting?... that should
totally wipe any partition info, giving you a clean
slate. After that the folder should be only a distant
memory.

good luck
scott.

 

[Samuel Hardy]

Have you tried deleting it from the command prompt? It is usually possible to delete files from here that you can't from within windows. Click Start...Run... then type cmd to open the command prompt

Your computer assigns files with very long names a short file name, and this has to be used to delete that file. From the command prompt, go to the directory where the problem file is stored and type Dir/x this will list oll the folders and files present, and supply the short name also. You can recognise the short name because it has the ~ symbol in it. The just type del *** where *** is the short name of the file or folder.

You may have to carry out the above from within safe mode to ensure that nothing else is using the folder at the same time, and make sure you delete the right folder! Deleting from the command prompt bypasses the recycle bin.

This worked for me when I had an undeletable file that was causing my system to crash, so I hope it works for you. Good luck,

Sam