Sunday, October 21, 2012

How to delete an undeletable file

Have you ever had a file that is undeletable ? ( windows )

I came across with such a problem myself a while ago and figured i'd show you guys how to deal with it.



Problem :


File looks like this "name.", as you can see it has no extentsion (it should be after the dot) and if you look at the file properties, you can see that the extentsion is actually described as "File".
Upon trying to delete it ( either selecting the file and pressing delete or right-clicking and selecting delete from the menu ) it says that the file is not found or does not exist, please check the files location.

So in summary:
  1. you can't delete that file?
  2. you can't relocate that file?
  3. you can't rename that file?
  4. you can't open that file?

Solution :
  1. make a new folder into the location where your file is located in and put all other files (exept the bugged file) into that folder.
  2. open command prompt (cmd) - either hold down the windows logo on your keyboard and press "r" type "cmd" into the window that opened and press enter or open up start menu and select "run" and type "cmd" into the window that opened and press enter or open start menu and search for cmd.exe and open it.
  3. delete all files in the location selected - enter a command "del FULL LOCATION /f /p *.*" without the quotes("") and press enter. FULL LOCATION is of course your bugged files FULL LOCATION, example C:\users\name\desktop\new folder\also folder.
    Full example: del C:\files\folder\abc /f /p *.*
  4. refresh the location - right click in the folder/location and select refresh or select (left-click) the folder/location and press F5 on your keyboard.
  5. relocate all other files - now you can put all other files that you previously relocated into the new folder.

1 comment:

  1. Wow! I did not know it was possible to do this. Thank you for the information!

    ReplyDelete