Deleteing Pupil Folders

[quaium]

Every year when deleting folders of students that have left we are left with a few that cannot be deleted. They are mainly folders created by the student which has several (around 13/15) other empty folders contained within the students home folder.

 

When we try to delete the folder or any of the sub folders we get an error reading: "Error Deleting File or Folder - Cannt delete file:" We have played about with permissions and have had no luck.

 

Does anyone have any ideas on how we can remove these folders?

[elsiegee40]

Have you tried taking ownership of the top-level folder and then checking the box to propogate the ownership down to all files and sub-folders?

[pinemarten]

I have had the same problem, as well as EXTREMELY long file names which cannot be deleted.

I find Delinvfile does the trick;

http://www.purgeie.com/delinv/

[quaium]

I have had the same problem, as well as EXTREMELY long file names which cannot be deleted.

I find Delinvfile does the trick;

http://www.purgeie.com/delinv/

 

Thanks! That little program has done the trick on all the folders except one.

 

The folder I am having problems with now doesn't actually show any files in it via Windows Explorer (even with hidden files viewed). However, when using the program above it listed files within a RECYCLER folder which it could not delete.

 

Any further ideas anyone?

[Geoff]

Scandisk? perhaps the file system is corrupt.

[Joanne]

i get that when i clear out mp3's... it deletes it but the file still appears for some reason and if i try and delete it again it comes up with the message. It doesn't take up space though.

[markcuk]

try using linux!

 

i have a linux box just for deleting old pupils seems to handle filenames batter than windows!

 

mark

[Michael]

I agree with the above, allowing the administrator to take Ownership and of course have Full Control is the key.

 

I have found removing the "Creator Owner" entry can also help in these situations. The only other thing I can think of is make sure those directories are not in use by Explorer.exe (although they shouldn't be as the students have left).

[quaium]

Still no luck with deleting the folder.

 

I've done all the ownership and permissions stuff to begin with and it didn't work. The strange thing with this folder is that within the "RECYCLER" folder it has another folder with a file name containing letters and numbers but the icon of the folder shows up as the Recycle Bin icon!

[apeo]

Still no luck with deleting the folder.

 

I've done all the ownership and permissions stuff to begin with and it didn't work. The strange thing with this folder is that within the "RECYCLER" folder it has another folder with a file name containing letters and numbers but the icon of the folder shows up as the Recycle Bin icon!

 

Have you run scandisk yet?

[quaium]

Have you run scandisk yet?

 

Yes I have and it found nothing.

[bossman]

We Use Delinvfile here as we find that the students have used long names and or characters within these naming conventions that kids seem to want to use. Latest naming craze is xxxxxMyFilexxxxx and so on and so forth.