Remove Folders Using CMD

[Hightower]

So Bossman gave me the solution to a problem we're having with Symantec, and rather than run the solution manually on the machines as and when they suffer the problem (as it takes about 10 minutes) I thought I'd put it in a batch file to do it for me.

It's about done, but I need two things adding to my batch file:

1) Delete all folders (and files within them) from C:\Program Files\Common Files\Symantec Shared\VirusDefs where the folder name matches ????????.??? (where ? is a single wild card character)

2) Delete all folders (and files within them) from C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Symantec\Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition\7.5\I2_LDVP.VDB

The trouble I'm having is that you cannot use wild card characters in a batch file command such as RMDIR or RD. I think the way to do this would be with a loop, but I'm not sure where to start so any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

[OutToLunch]

So Bossman gave me the solution to a problem we're having with Symantec, and rather than run the solution manually on the machines as and when they suffer the problem (as it takes about 10 minutes) I thought I'd put it in a batch file to do it for me.

It's about done, but I need two things adding to my batch file:

1) Delete all folders (and files within them) from C:\Program Files\Common Files\Symantec Shared\VirusDefs where the folder name matches ????????.??? (where ? is a single wild card character)

2) Delete all folders (and files within them) from C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Symantec\Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition\7.5\I2_LDVP.VDB

The trouble I'm having is that you cannot use wild card characters in a batch file command such as RMDIR or RD. I think the way to do this would be with a loop, but I'm not sure where to start so any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Don't have SAV but this looks relatively simple - just to clarify

(1), is there always only a single folder under VirusDefs that you wish to remove and no other files in the root VirusDefs folder, or are there multiple files in there and you want to specify a specific filename when running the batch to remove only one file?

(2) Is I2_LDVP.VDB the folder name? If you want everything gone from under it, can you do it the lazy way and just

rd /s /q I2_LDVP.VDB (Remove I2_LDVP.VDB and all subfolders, no prompting)
md I2_LDVP.VDB (Recreate I2_LDVP.VDB)

or is this locked while SAV is running? If you need to do it in a loop, it should be

del /q "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Symantec\Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition\7.5\I2_LDVP.VDB\*"
for /D %%I in (C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Symantec\Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition\7.5\I2_LDVP.VDB\*) do RD /s /q "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Symantec\Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition\7.5\I2_LDVP.VDB\%%I"

[Hightower]

Thanks - that loop should get me going

[Hightower]

Need to use a wild card character in an if statement like:

if %%I == "????????.???" ECHO This works!

So it is any 8 characters followed by a dot followed by any 3 characters.

Anybody got any ideas how to do this because the above doesn't work.

[jamesb]

Need to use a wild card character in an if statement like:

if %%I == "????????.???" ECHO This works!

So it is any 8 characters followed by a dot followed by any 3 characters.

Anybody got any ideas how to do this because the above doesn't work.

Use PowerShell?

Lets you do it with regular expressions, which might make things much easier for you.

[OutToLunch]

findstr in a normal batch will let you use regex, should be able to get this to combine and do what you want but haven't got any time left this afternoon to play - findstr /? on the console will give you some ideas of what you can do with it.