the Half Existing Folder

[Davros]

I have a folder in my start menu, I can see it right click on it select properties, but if I try to change the attributes or delete it windows says the folder doesnt exist
ive ran a disk check

any ideas how to delete it ?

 

[Malo]

Run CMD as admin and delete in command line?

 

[Davros]

no same error
I created another folder with the same name on my desktop then pasted it into the startmenu
you would expect a "a folder of this name allready exists" type dialog but no I had 2 folders on programs with exactly the same name
that should not be possible I could delete the second one but not the first

 

[Davros]

when i right click on it and select delete i get this


goggled someone with a similar problem he said rebuilding the index fixed it for him didnt work for me

 

[hughJ]

Is there an entry for that start menu item in the registry?

 

[Davros]

no already deleted it
edit:
this post seems to sed some light
http://superuser.com/questions/3888...not-exist-but-appear-in-my-download-directory
the folder name appears to end with a space
a long time ago I had an undeletable file and someone linked to a program designed to remove fxp folders folders called aux or null or prn
than may work if I can find the post

 

[snarfbot]

ive had similar things happen to me.

i think the problem has to do with administrator privileges under win 7. i think i was trying to delete something in program files as well, and it just wouldnt let me, even though i supposedly had full admin.

so i right clicked the file, checked the modify/delete variable thing in properties and tried deleting it again. iirc the dialog popped up that it was deleting the file/folder and then just hung for a while.

and then after about 10 minutes or so of nothing i got tired of waiting for it to complete and just x'ed out the thing and then i had a ghost folder like you mentioned.

the whole permissions system in 7 is really convoluted so i can see how it could get screwed up fast, and the program files directory being read only by default is also super dumb.

anyway this happened over a year ago now, on the same windows installation and its still working fine, so i wouldnt worry too much.

 

[Arwin]

no already deleted it
edit:
this post seems to sed some light
http://superuser.com/questions/3888...not-exist-but-appear-in-my-download-directory
the folder name appears to end with a space
a long time ago I had an undeletable file and someone linked to a program designed to remove fxp folders folders called aux or null or prn
than may work if I can find the post

Yes, the space at the end is a cool one that messes up windows. Now that you know what it is though, you'll find something that can deal with it easily enough.

Something like this should help out:

http://www.filehippo.com/download_unlocker/

 

[Davros]

allready tried that cannot delete the file because it doesnt exist

but I rock
run cmd as admin
go to start menu programs
dir /x to find the 8.3 compat name incomi~1
renamed incomi~1 to dav (rename icomi~1 dav)
check with dir /x that it was indeed renamed
but in windows incoming forces was still there and it contained a folder called dav that was also undelete-able(weird)
rd dav worked - yay

 

[zed]

I've had something similar under windows, it ouldnt let me delete it cause it said it didnt exist, even though it was telling me it did.
solution = boot up linux & delete it

 

[Davros]

I had a file that even barts pe or knoppix live cd couldnt delete
details :
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=46758&highlight=delete&page=2

 

[Grall]

Disk editor, and zero out the sector(s) that contain the file identifier/header?

 

[Blazkowicz]

I never knew windows had C:\ProgramData those days, sounds like it's like /var in Unix clones.

renaming a file ending in ~1 brings me back a bad memory. it was a fat32 file system, and I did this from pure DOS.
ren progra~1 programs
I guess I wanted to "back up" the Program Files folder, but I totally lost access to it and a file system check wouldn't fix that.

so, be careful about that interesting "feature" . I don't want to know what would have happened if I had progra~1, progra~2 etc.

btw, getting config files out of program files was mostly a good thing.
windows only lack more installer options, you should be able to put C:\Users on a different partition. but you can hack this yourself probably.

 

[Davros]

when i did a ren iccomi~1 dav
it looked correct in the cmd window with dir /x I had ( \programs\dav\ )
but when I looked in the start menu i had ( \programs\incoming forces\dav\ )
thats another quirk

 

[swaaye]

The other day I had an uninstaller delete almost everything in Program Files on Win7. That was fun.

 

[Davros]

One of the early patches of half life (could of even been retail 1.0) would also delete the parent folder
Fine if you installed it to the default c:\program files\seirra\half life\
not so good if you chose c:\half life\
Naturally the righteous would never try to displease the Gaming Gods by committing such a heinous act as uninstalling HL

 

[Blazkowicz]

back then clicking on that link would have crashed your win9x system : file:///c:/con/con
or juster enter c:\con\con at the runbox.