Need help to remove a long name file

[Andiez]

I have two files in a Temporary Internet Files folder that are 175
characters long. The characters are letters and numbers, and the files are
..htm which open to www.msn.com. I can't remove them delete them, view the
properties, or anything except open them. Does anyone have any idea how to
remove them outside of formatting the drive, which may not work. Help!

Andie Z

 

[philo]

I have two files in a Temporary Internet Files folder that are 175
characters long. The characters are letters and numbers, and the files are
.htm which open to www.msn.com. I can't remove them delete them, view the
properties, or anything except open them. Does anyone have any idea how to
remove them outside of formatting the drive, which may not work. Help!

Andie Z

open a command prompt then enter chkdsk /f

say yes

then reboot...

after any file system errors are corrected, they should be deleteable

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I have two files in a Temporary Internet Files folder that are 175
characters long. The characters are letters and numbers, and the files
are .htm which open to www.msn.com. I can't remove them delete them, view
the properties, or anything except open them. Does anyone have any idea
how to remove them outside of formatting the drive, which may not work.
Help!

Andie Z

Try this if Philo's recipe does not work:
- Click Start / Run / cmd{OK}
- Type these commands:
cd "\Documents and Settings\..."{Enter}
(Enter the full path name to the problem folder)
dir /x /p {Enter}
(Make a note of the short file name for the problem file)
del {Short File Name}{Enter}

 

[George Hester]

Had the same problem the other day. They were cookie files with names that
were too long. Try this. Go into the folder with the command prompt where
the files reside. Make sure you remove from that folder any files you want
to some other folder. Then type: cd.. and hit enter. You should be one
folder up from where the files reside. Then type rmdir /s /q %NAMEOFFOLDER%
where NAMEOFFOLDER is the folder's name that is containing the files you
want to remove. Then hit ENTER.

 

[zeke7]

Had the same problem the other day. They were cookie files with names that
were too long. Try this. Go into the folder with the command prompt where
the files reside. Make sure you remove from that folder any files you want
to some other folder. Then type: cd.. and hit enter. You should be one
folder up from where the files reside. Then type rmdir /s /q %NAMEOFFOLDER%
where NAMEOFFOLDER is the folder's name that is containing the files you
want to remove. Then hit ENTER.

Andie: had this same problem in Win2k, in my case it was with Windows
Update files downloaded from the Microsoft catalog. Interesting that
the OS's very website filenames that are too long for their own
system to handle. (Their Catalog website appends long garbled
nonsensical alphanumeric suffixes to the downloaded files.) Couldn't
delete, rename, or move the files from Explorer.

Found 2 solutions on other forums (forget which); am confident one or
the other, or a combination of the 2 will work for you; they did for
me:

1. Use the command prompt to find the 'short' filename for these
(familiarity in the old DOS command-line environment is required]:
"use command prompt to find the offending file. use the command dir /x
to get the shortened file name ie 12345~1.jpg. then enter del
12345~1.jpg. 12345~1.jpg obviously being substituted for whatever file
you wish to remove."

Using the s-switch "del [short filename] /s" helps in some cases; for
troublesome folders, use same technique but the command is "rd [short
foldername] /s" (no quotes).

2. A free program written specifically for this task,
"DelinvFile.exe" (v3.02). I was a bit nervous using it at first but it
worked perfectly for me, even getting rid of a couple of folders that
the above technique could not achieve. The source website is "http://
www.purgeie.com/delinv/"; other download site also offer it, some
offering v.2.02, which is completely freeware according to the source
website. v3.02 apparently provides some advanced features on a 15-day
try-before-you-buy trial, where they were all free with v.2.02. But
you'll probably just need it once, so get the 3.02.