Usenet Explorer

Ok this is a strange one.
And although this seems to be more of a windows question I have not been successful in deleting this folder no matter what I have tried... and I have tried a considerable amount of things.. My last resort is to format the hard drive (Which I am preparing to do now)


This is what I have done so far :
I created a folder on my D-drive called "Music and stuff..." (yes the three periods at the end are part of the folder name)

This folder I can not access, delete, rename or even look at the permissions (let alone take ownership of it)


When attempting to do anything windows tells me that the folder is not
available or may no longer exist.

What I have tried so far.

Tried deleting, moving renaming it as administrator.
Tried deleting, moving renaming its parent directory.
Tried deleting, moving renaming it via administrator command prompt.
Tried booting into safemode and deleting, moving renaming.
Tried booting the computer with Barts Preinstall disk (which is XP) and
deleting, moving renaming.
Tried using Directory Opus (alternative File Manager)and deleting, moving
renaming.
Tried running chkdisk on the drive for errors.

I am totally out of ideas. My last option is to reformat the entire drive and I would prefere not to do that if I can get around it. (thank god this isn't on my C-drive)


anyone have any ideas please!

The easiest way:

Download GiPo@FileUtilities, install with context menu entries checked, right-click the directory and delete or rename on boot.

Thanks Josef.

Unfortunately it didn't work either. there must have been a file table corruption that windows could not correct..

I ended up formating the drive an starting over.

Thankfully this drive is dedicated for Usenet explorer if it dies it wont take my system down.

Thanks again.

it is just a system fault, maybe after improper system shutdown.

ue just using standard create file function like any program in the system.

try to recreate the same name again if you remember it exactly, in principle it is possible to create files which windows explorer cannot delete (but you can delete them from command prompt using the short name), but basically UE checks for those names, i don't remember the details right now, maybe space in the beginning on the name or spaces before the file extension dot, something like that, UE trims those names as windows explorer does.

I did read you already solved the problem, but just in case it happens again.

I have the same problem on occassion, and somehow, I could delete it by closing UE and first deleting the contents of the folder or subfolders whatever it may be the case.
If you have several folders inside, it may become tedious as you would have to delete the content of each subfolder before deleting the folder.

I think this is a Vista problem. I am running Vista Ultimate.

mariela06 wrote:I did read you already solved the problem, but just in case it happens again.

I have the same problem on occassion, and somehow, I could delete it by closing UE and first deleting the contents of the folder or subfolders whatever it may be the case.
If you have several folders inside, it may become tedious as you would have to delete the content of each subfolder before deleting the folder.

I think this is a Vista problem. I am running Vista Ultimate.

Is a bug in Vista. There is a fix and you can find it with google.

alex wrote:it is just a system fault, maybe after improper system shutdown.

ue just using standard create file function like any program in the system.

try to recreate the same name again if you remember it exactly, in principle it is possible to create files which windows explorer cannot delete (but you can delete them from command prompt using the short name), but basically UE checks for those names, i don't remember the details right now, maybe space in the beginning on the name or spaces before the file extension dot, something like that, UE trims those names as windows explorer does.

In the old MS Dos days when you deleted a file it changed the first character of the filename to 0x5D or ']' IIRC. There may be something still in Windows for Dos backward compatibility?

I can remember using Peter Norton's little floppy disk editor assembler program to undelete files by changing that character back to the original.