The system file cannot be specified

[Carmel]

Have you tried third party file managers? A google search on 'XP
file managers' turned up quite a few choices.

Perhaps starting up in 'Safe Mode' and then attempting to delete the
file might prove worthwhile. Then again, have you tried to open the
file and then save and delete it?

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Carmel |::::=======
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[John John - MVP]

John,

I no longer have a Win2k machine. The one I'm having problems with is
XP with service pack 3.

As for still working on it...it's definitely a challenge so I'm still
working on it. It's an easy fix with formatting. All the contents are
on a backup drive. So that won't be a problem. But I'm convinced
there has to be a way to defeat this hiccup.

If you had a Windows 2000 box (or an NT4 box) you could have tried to
run the Posix Rm.exe utility to delete the file on a mapped network drive.

Windows 2000 is Posix compliant, Windows XP isn't. You can download the
hefty Windows Services for Unix and it will install the Posix subsystem
on Windows XP but even then the Rm.exe command might not work as
expected, if at all, it runs better from a Windows 2000/NT4 machine.

John

 

[Barry Schwarz]

To the poster who asked whether I had right-clicked and tried to
rename or delete: I tried that. It didn't work.

I was very excited about the suggestion to use dm.com. I should have
thought of using something that only knew short names. Alas! I tried
it and it didn't work. It was interesting to note, however, that the
object did NOT show up in the list of files displayed by dm.

As for the batch file suggestion, thanks for that one as well. I had
already created several batch files that contained various del and rd
commands. Nothing has worked so far.

I should also mention that I appreciate the tips everyone is giving
me, including the step by step method of implementing those tips.
Thank you, John, for giving me such elaborate instructions that there
was no way I could fail to follow them. I should add, however, that
I've been working with DOS since just after it gained hierarchy
structure. What was that, 2 or something? That's why I could kick
myself for not thinking of using something that only recognized short
names. Anyway, I thought I'd pass that on to save you some typing on
future suggestions.

If you move all the other files in the directory to some other
directory, can you back out one level and delete the entire directory
with any of the tools that have been suggested so far?