Undeletable files

[milleron]

No one needs to read this long narrative. I post it here ONLY because
some poor soul with the same problem may run across it in a Google
search and perhaps save some of the many hours I wasted.

I wanted to convert a FAT32 C: drive to NTFS, so that I could have it
backed up on Windows Home Server. That normally takes nothing more
than a reboot and 2-3 minutes, but it failed, both with Partition
Magic 8 and XP's convert.exe, because of 11 corrupt files in
Windows\Temp. They appeared with names that contained no or few
alphanumeric characters, like squares, brackets, and pipes. (They
never showed up as errors in CHKDSK. I Googled the error message I
got when I tried to delete: "The filename, directory name, or volume
label syntax is incorrect." I got hits and suggestions for free
utilities to use. I spent HOURS fiddling with all of them, but
nothing helped. PARTICULARLY USELESS was the MS KB.

I considered trashing the whole drive and reinstalling, which would
have taken days or weeks. I then thought to boot with Knoppix. It
saw the files but couldn't delete them. For some totally unknown
reason, rather than admit defeat after 8 hours of frustration, I tried
another flavor of Linux, Ubuntu (Gutsy Gibbon). Booting from the
Ubuntu CD, I could see the files but still couldn't delete them.
HOWEVER, Ubuntu allowed me to send the entire TEMP folder to the
Ubuntu Trash. [EUREKA] A reboot to XP revealed that the files and
TEMP folder were gone from the Windows folder, but, unfortunately,
they were still on the C: drive in a folder Ubuntu made. I booted
back to Ubuntu and this time just clicked "Empty Trash." NINE of the
11 files vanished. I clicked "Empty Trash" again, and the other two
vanished. Back in XP, I deleted the now-empty Ubuntu Trash folder and
elected "convert" in Partition Magic. The conversion proceeded
without further ado, and I ended up, after EIGHT HOURS, with a nice
NTFS boot partition that has nice, efficient 4K clusters.

Linux, cost $0.00, did what Windows couldn't do for itself in a
thousand years. I realize that this was an obsolete file system and
that the files probably wouldn't have ended up with corrupted names in
NTFS, but, for the love of Pete, in the decade that's elapsed since
FAT32 was introduced (Win95 OSR2) shouldn't MS have devised a solution
for this problem other than using a sector editor on the drive.

If you've read this far, and you know of something other than Ubuntu
and a sector editor that would have gotten rid of these d#!*#d files,
please jump in.

Ron

 

[thecreator]

Hi Ron,

Did you ever think to use msconfig and limit what was starting up in
Windows XP? Dot Selective Startup. Uncheck Load Startup Items. On Services
Tab, Hide all Microsoft Services, then disable the rest. Click Apply Then
Close and reboot, with the barest minimum of Startup programs possible.

Or, did you try Safe Mode in Windows? Just curious.


--
thecreator

No one needs to read this long narrative. I post it here ONLY because
some poor soul with the same problem may run across it in a Google
search and perhaps save some of the many hours I wasted.

I wanted to convert a FAT32 C: drive to NTFS, so that I could have it
backed up on Windows Home Server. That normally takes nothing more
than a reboot and 2-3 minutes, but it failed, both with Partition
Magic 8 and XP's convert.exe, because of 11 corrupt files in
Windows\Temp. They appeared with names that contained no or few
alphanumeric characters, like squares, brackets, and pipes. (They
never showed up as errors in CHKDSK. I Googled the error message I
got when I tried to delete: "The filename, directory name, or volume
label syntax is incorrect." I got hits and suggestions for free
utilities to use. I spent HOURS fiddling with all of them, but
nothing helped. PARTICULARLY USELESS was the MS KB.

I considered trashing the whole drive and reinstalling, which would
have taken days or weeks. I then thought to boot with Knoppix. It
saw the files but couldn't delete them. For some totally unknown
reason, rather than admit defeat after 8 hours of frustration, I tried
another flavor of Linux, Ubuntu (Gutsy Gibbon). Booting from the
Ubuntu CD, I could see the files but still couldn't delete them.
HOWEVER, Ubuntu allowed me to send the entire TEMP folder to the
Ubuntu Trash. [EUREKA] A reboot to XP revealed that the files and
TEMP folder were gone from the Windows folder, but, unfortunately,
they were still on the C: drive in a folder Ubuntu made. I booted
back to Ubuntu and this time just clicked "Empty Trash." NINE of the
11 files vanished. I clicked "Empty Trash" again, and the other two
vanished. Back in XP, I deleted the now-empty Ubuntu Trash folder and
elected "convert" in Partition Magic. The conversion proceeded
without further ado, and I ended up, after EIGHT HOURS, with a nice
NTFS boot partition that has nice, efficient 4K clusters.

Linux, cost $0.00, did what Windows couldn't do for itself in a
thousand years. I realize that this was an obsolete file system and
that the files probably wouldn't have ended up with corrupted names in
NTFS, but, for the love of Pete, in the decade that's elapsed since
FAT32 was introduced (Win95 OSR2) shouldn't MS have devised a solution
for this problem other than using a sector editor on the drive.

If you've read this far, and you know of something other than Ubuntu
and a sector editor that would have gotten rid of these d#!*#d files,
please jump in.

Ron

 

[milleron]

Hi Ron,

Did you ever think to use msconfig and limit what was starting up in
Windows XP? Dot Selective Startup. Uncheck Load Startup Items. On Services
Tab, Hide all Microsoft Services, then disable the rest. Click Apply Then
Close and reboot, with the barest minimum of Startup programs possible.

Or, did you try Safe Mode in Windows? Just curious.

Thanks for the reply. I really didn't think anyone would read that
tale of woe.

Again, I reply at length simply for the benefit of folks who may run
across this thread in the future.

Safe mode didn't work. Basically, using UBCD4Win or Bart's-PE disks
achieves the same thing. This was a problem with the FILE SYSTEM,
FAT32, and it really had nothing whatsoever to do with drivers, which
is basically the only difference between Safe mode and normal mode.
I'm a novice, but IMHO, it had little to do with Windows, itself.
Remember, even Knoppix Linux, which accesses the file system with
absolutely no involvement of Windows or Windows drivers, could not
delete the files. I do not know nearly enough about Linux to explain
why Ubuntu was able to make progress when Knoppix couldn't, but I am
FOREVER grateful for the largesse of Mark Shuttleworth and his team of
Ubuntu delelopers.

I didn't try the process you suggest for Msconfig. Using msconfig
couldn't give you any advantage over Safe mode, could it? However, if
I had thought of your suggestion, I surely would have tried it. I
tried everything I could think of, so I wouldn't have hesitated to
give it a shot.

I think the big majority of problems with undeletable files in the
Windows environment has to do with filenames that violate restrictions
on length, allowed characters, or UNC conventions. I turned up
virtually nothing on my specific problem after hours researching it on
the Web. I also still have no idea what caused the corrupt files in
that one directory or why chkdsk found no problem with them.

Ron