removing an impossible nammed folder

On Tue, 23 Feb 2016 13:55:17 +0100, g.bon2 wrote:

I have a empty folder nammed : "---------- - " (with spaces)
Name seems to be invalid but it exists.
I don't know who or what has created it.
I can't delete or rename it.
Didn't try to copy ;-)

Each backup produce an error so I would like to remove it.
Any idea or software for doing this ?

Create a bootable Linux CD/DVD/USB flash drive to start up. Try to
remove the folder again under Linux.

A while ago, I created some screenshots under Xubuntu and copied them to
a flash drive. The (jpg) files couldn't be opened, moved or removed
under Windows, cause by some characters used in the name. Booted with
Xubuntu and no problems deleting the files.

--
s|b

On Tue, 23 Feb 2016 09:30:11 -0500, Big Al wrote:

I was going to say download a copy of any Linux Live DVD iso and boot it
to get to an explorer and delete it there.

Or flash drive.

Is what I suggested as well. Next time, I'll read the whole thread
/before/ posting, I promise!

--
s|b

On 2/23/2016 7:55 AM, g.bon2 wrote:
Hi,
I have a empty folder nammed : "---------- - " (with spaces)
Name seems to be invalid but it exists.
I don't know who or what has created it.
I can't delete or rename it.
Didn't try to copy ;-)

Each backup produce an error so I would like to remove it.
Any idea or software for doing this ?
Thanks
It does not look like you got a good answer in all of the post to your
request.

I had a couple of dozen files that I could not change the permission,
and got an error exactly as you have.

You must take control of the folder. To change permissions
Open the Properties for the file then in Security Advance in the lower
part of the window.

It is a two step process first you have to change the owner at the very
top of the window. There is a Windows Icon followed by Change, Click
change Change the owner to a owner with full administrative priveleges.
Click OK and leave the Folders Properties

Now go back to the same Screen and in the Permission box add the same
owner that you add changed above.

You may also have to add the person to the Share Tab in the same window.


Point it can be done without editing the register or any other thing
that has been suggested. I just takes a little fussing to get the right
thing in the right spot. I should have written the procedure down
before continuing with the dozen changes, but I did not. I was happy to
get rid of them.

On Tue, 23 Feb 2016 14:46:20 -0500, Keith Nuttle wrote:

It does not look like you got a good answer in all of the post to your
request.

That's /your/ opinion. I'm pretty sure booting with a Linux OS and
removing the folder is a _very good answer_ to the OP's request. It's
definitely worth a try.

--
s|b

On 2/23/2016 4:06 PM, s|b wrote:
On Tue, 23 Feb 2016 14:46:20 -0500, Keith Nuttle wrote:

It does not look like you got a good answer in all of the post to your
request.

That's /your/ opinion. I'm pretty sure booting with a Linux OS and
removing the folder is a _very good answer_ to the OP's request. It's
definitely worth a try.

If the OP has access to Linus OS.


My first computer was a Texas Instrument TI99/4a. I have used the early
Apple II. I loved OS/2, and only went to Windows when forced to. In
all of those years I have never used a computer with a Linux variant.

On Tue, 23 Feb 2016 17:40:33 -0500, Keith Nuttle
wrote:

On 2/23/2016 4:06 PM, s|b wrote:
On Tue, 23 Feb 2016 14:46:20 -0500, Keith Nuttle wrote:

It does not look like you got a good answer in all of the post to your
request.

That's /your/ opinion. I'm pretty sure booting with a Linux OS and
removing the folder is a _very good answer_ to the OP's request. It's
definitely worth a try.

If the OP has access to Linus OS.

I think that would be the easy part of the exercise. The OP can
download Linux Mint Cinnamon 17.3 and burn that to a DVD. Then just
boot from the DVD.

g.bon2 wrote:
Hi,
I have a empty folder nammed : "---------- - " (with spaces)
Name seems to be invalid but it exists.
I don't know who or what has created it.
I can't delete or rename it.
Didn't try to copy ;-)

Each backup produce an error so I would like to remove it.
Any idea or software for doing this ?
Thanks

I did some tests.

http://s29.postimg.org/dovno7hx3/lagging_space.gif

First, I installed ActiveState Perl. And used the "mkdir"
function in Perl to try to make the 13 character directory name.
But Perl refused to make an illegal name, and it stripped off
any trailing space character. The resulting directory
was only 12 characters long like this "---------- -" .

And that tells me, that in all probability, using third-party
tools to fix this won't work. I don't think this is the fault
of Perl, rather something that happens when the request hits
the file system.

So I booted a LiveCD, did the folder creation there, and
had no trouble putting a space on the end. Since I could create
the troublesome directory in Linux, I should be able to remove
it there as well.

I booted back into Windows 10, and tried to do properties on "---------- - "
and the results are shown in the Postimg picture above.

So what appears to happen, is the request for information
on a thing with a trailing space, the space is removed before
the query goes to the file system. The 12 character name
does not match the 13 character entry in the $MFT. And then
the above error dialog

"The requested security information is either unavailable or can't be displayed."

appears, instead of the actual file security setting.

So my best guess at this point, is it really will take a
trip to Linux LiveCD land to fix this.

The security message in the picture above, results from
the directory name not being functionally accessible, rather
than the security being set so tightly the information
cannot be fetched. Additional tests in Perl returned Errno
information consistent with the query never making it unmolested
to the actual file system. Presumably this is an "improvement"
in Windows 10. I'm not sure this would have happened in much
older OSes (like WinXP).

Paul

Paul wrote:

I installed ActiveState Perl. And used the "mkdir" function in Perl
to try to make the 13 character directory name. But Perl refused to
make an illegal name, and it stripped off any trailing space
character.

As far as I remember the cygwin tools can create "malformed" filenames
under /cygdrive/C/whatever without resorting to booting a Linux O/S

Andy Burns wrote:
Paul wrote:

I installed ActiveState Perl. And used the "mkdir" function in Perl
to try to make the 13 character directory name. But Perl refused to
make an illegal name, and it stripped off any trailing space
character.

As far as I remember the cygwin tools can create "malformed" filenames
under /cygdrive/C/whatever without resorting to booting a Linux O/S


Apparently the behavior existed on Windows 7 too.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2...trailing-space

And this solution from stackoverflow (as Konrad reported) works.
So this will get the job done. I tried to do this from Perl,
but it didn't seem to like a UNC in there. I was probably
doing it wrong, because my knowledge of Perl is limited
to the contents of the two books I bought :-) When I did
this from Command Prompt, it worked with no problem.

You do this from a command prompt window, and it's
suitable for a directory with a space on the end.

rd "\\?\C:\holds bad subdir\20120530-04 "

Paul

On Wed, 24 Feb 2016 07:56:24 -0500, Paul wrote in


snip

Apparently the behavior existed on Windows 7 too.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2...trailing-space

And this solution from stackoverflow (as Konrad reported) works.
So this will get the job done. I tried to do this from Perl,
but it didn't seem to like a UNC in there. I was probably
doing it wrong, because my knowledge of Perl is limited
to the contents of the two books I bought :-) When I did
this from Command Prompt, it worked with no problem.

You do this from a command prompt window, and it's
suitable for a directory with a space on the end.

rd "\\?\C:\holds bad subdir\20120530-04 "

Paul

Just curious, is the "?" required instead of the actual name?
--
Web based forums are like subscribing to 10 different newspapers
and having to visit 10 different news stands to pickup each one.
Email list-server groups and USENET are like having all of those
newspapers delivered to your door every morning.

"CRNG" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
...
On Wed, 24 Feb 2016 07:56:24 -0500, Paul wrote in


snip

Apparently the behavior existed on Windows 7 too.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2...trailing-space

And this solution from stackoverflow (as Konrad reported) works.
So this will get the job done. I tried to do this from Perl,
but it didn't seem to like a UNC in there. I was probably
doing it wrong, because my knowledge of Perl is limited
to the contents of the two books I bought :-) When I did
this from Command Prompt, it worked with no problem.

You do this from a command prompt window, and it's
suitable for a directory with a space on the end.

rd "\\?\C:\holds bad subdir\20120530-04 "

Paul

Just curious, is the "?" required instead of the actual name?
--
Web based forums are like subscribing to 10 different newspapers
and having to visit 10 different news stands to pickup each one.
Email list-server groups and USENET are like having all of those
newspapers delivered to your door every morning.

The "?" is required because the "\\?\" is used as a prefix for strange and
very long path names.
See "Naming Files, Paths, and Namespaces" in MSDN
(http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...(v=vs.85).aspx)

Konrad

Konrad Kullig wrote:
"CRNG" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
...
On Wed, 24 Feb 2016 07:56:24 -0500, Paul wrote in


snip

Apparently the behavior existed on Windows 7 too.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2...trailing-space

And this solution from stackoverflow (as Konrad reported) works.
So this will get the job done. I tried to do this from Perl,
but it didn't seem to like a UNC in there. I was probably
doing it wrong, because my knowledge of Perl is limited
to the contents of the two books I bought :-) When I did
this from Command Prompt, it worked with no problem.

You do this from a command prompt window, and it's
suitable for a directory with a space on the end.

rd "\\?\C:\holds bad subdir\20120530-04 "

Paul
Just curious, is the "?" required instead of the actual name?
--
Web based forums are like subscribing to 10 different newspapers
and having to visit 10 different news stands to pickup each one.
Email list-server groups and USENET are like having all of those
newspapers delivered to your door every morning.

The "?" is required because the "\\?\" is used as a prefix for strange and
very long path names.
See "Naming Files, Paths, and Namespaces" in MSDN
(http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/libr...(v=vs.85).aspx)

Konrad



I needed https here for some reason...

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/lib...(v=vs.85).aspx

*******

Other examples include the block-level access demonstrated here.

http://www.chrysocome.net/dd
NT Block Device Objects
\\?\Device\CdRom0
\\?\Device\Floppy0
\\?\Device\Harddisk0\Partition0

Or when you're working in Win10 and a partition doesn't
have a drive letter (like System Reserved), you can use
the MountVol info instead. (Run "mountvol" in command prompt.)
I've re-ordered these slightly, to put them
in some sort of order.

\\?\Volume{e09035e5-0000-0000-0000-100000000000}\
*** NO MOUNT POINTS ***

\\?\Volume{e09035e5-0000-0000-0000-f01500000000}\
E:\

\\?\Volume{e09035e5-0000-0000-0000-100010000000}\
C:\

\\?\Volume{e09035e5-0000-0000-0000-f0e30f000000}\
*** NO MOUNT POINTS ***

\\?\Volume{9afc859e-0000-0000-0000-100000000000}\
F:\

\\?\Volume{eb55af6d-d378-11e4-b62a-806e6f6e6963}\
G:\

The first four are my hard drive. System Reserved is
the partition with no drive letter. If I wanted to
CHKDSK it, I might try

chkdsk \\?\Volume{e09035e5-0000-0000-0000-100000000000}\

The RECOVERY partition is probably the other one with
no mount points. It has partition type 0x27 Hidden NTFS.

The prefix of "e09035e5" is common to the four partitions
on that same hard drive. F: is my RAMDisk. G: is my optical drive.

So that's another way to reference devices.

Paul

On Tue, 23 Feb 2016 17:40:33 -0500, Keith Nuttle wrote:

That's /your/ opinion. I'm pretty sure booting with a Linux OS and
removing the folder is a _very good answer_ to the OP's request. It's
definitely worth a try.

If the OP has access to Linus OS.

Everybody with an Internet connection has access to a Linux OS. What
don't you understand about booting with a live CD/DVD/USB Linux OS? All
you need is a CD-R(W), DVD-R(W) or a flash drive. Nothing will be
installed on the Windows partition and all files on the Windows OS can
be accessed... and deleted. Simple.

--
s|b

On Tue, 23 Feb 2016 21:11:12 -0500, Paul wrote:

So my best guess at this point, is it really will take a
trip to Linux LiveCD land to fix this.

Or a DVD or a USB flash drive.

--
s|b

s|b wrote:
On Tue, 23 Feb 2016 21:11:12 -0500, Paul wrote:

So my best guess at this point, is it really will take a
trip to Linux LiveCD land to fix this.

Or a DVD or a USB flash drive.


Actually, this worked in Windows for me, like Konrad suggested.

rd "\\?\C:\holds bad subdir\---------- - "

I had trouble *making* a mess in Windows. My attempt
in Perl didn't work, and I used Linux to put in that
directory for testing.

But while booted in Win10, and from a Command Prompt,
that style of command worked fine. The pesky directory
is now gone.

Paul