can't delete a folder

Discussion in 'Trading Software' started by lendbz, Oct 15, 2005.

  1. lendbz

    lendbz

    someone got into my ftp that is setup on my computer that allow anonymous access last night and was uploading weird movie files with weird folders names like (#$@#adgd$$) and a lot of folder levels (folders within folders within folders within folders and finally the files).. i deleted everything(except one) right away and kick the person out.. however, there is one folder i cannot delete, it has nothing in there, and it's a folder that has no name.. what i mean is when you look at it in windows explorer, you will just see the folder icon, but no name after it..

    i try to delete the folder and it gave me the error of
    Cannot delete files: Cannot read from the source file or disk.

    so then i try to delete the folder that contains this no name folder, and it gave me an error of
    cannot remove folder, directory is not empty

    I try renaming and moving the noname folder, but another "Cannot read from the source file or disk" error pops up...

    I try to delete the directory in dos prompt, but since it has no name, i don't know how to point to it..

    what i mean is, say in dos prompt, i type "dir" to get the directory listing of that folder, and this is the result
    9/21/2005 9:40AM < DIR > .
    9/21/2005 9:40AM < DIR > ..
    9/21/2005 10:00AM < DIR >
    0 file(s) 0 bytes
    3 Dir(s) 9999999 bytes free
    See the 3rd directory listed doesn't have a name.. so i can't really use the rd command cuz i have no path name to put in...

    i was thinking about the old dos deltree command to delete the folder that contains that noname folder may work.. or not..? but it doesn't really exist anymore in winxp command prompt.. is there anything equivalent to it in winxp command prompt??

    This is more an annoyance than really a problem, it is just bugging me that i have a noname folder sitting in my computer that i can't do anything to.. >:wtf: If anyone can help me with a way to get rid of it, it would be much appreciated!

    Thanks!!
     
  2. nkhoi

    nkhoi

    re-install your OS
     
  3. I am always suprised that people who depend on a computer for a living do not have a decent backup / recovery procedure in place.

    if you can go into the directory you may want to do an "attrib -s -h -r" command to see if there are any hidden files etc in there too.

    Then search the internet for UNIX utilities for Windows. You'll need the command "rm". All you need to do is a "rm -r <dir>" where dir is the name of the directory. This is an equivalent of deltree. There are also some other switches that you can use with rm.

    we install only once XP, do a decent backup and if we need to apply changes then we do a restore of the original installation and apply the changes to that and make a new backup. This ensures to have an always "clean install" handy to which we can go back. Data is stored on a seperate partition.

    Hope this helps
    Maria