OT: Corrupt file that won't go away! HELP!!!!

GmElliott wrote on 8/25/2004, 9:29 PM
Was moving data off a DVD to my external hardrive. They were a series of DV avi clips. It stopped during the transfer and stated some sort of "cylindrical redundancy error". No biggie. Well I notice the file (despite the error) made it to my hardrive...or at least my hardrive thinks it's there. I double click it and it does play a short portion of the beginning of the clip...then goes grey....Assuming that's the point where the transfer went bad.

No biggie, just delete it- right? WRONG!

I tried deleting it and it said that it was in use by another program. I tried deleting some other clips that came off the same DVD and they are fine...they are able to be deleted.

I go and disconnect my external drive- power my machine down and do a cold boot. Re-connect my drive then give it another go. STILL says in use by another program. The file refuses to be deleted....or renamed or moved for that matter.

Heres the kicker- when I go to browse to the directory this corrupt file resides....my cpu usage goes through the roof even if I as much as highlight the file. I'm not talking double clicking to activate the file I'm talking a basic SINGLE click to highlight the file. The second I do my cpu jumps to 80% usage and won't stop. Even if I back out and stop browsing that directory...my cpu usage continues to stay around 80% despite the fact I'm not running any programs.

At this point I can't even "safely remove" my external drive. As soon as I try to stop it in XP it says a program is accessing it.
I'm assuming it's Explorer. Once it even glances at the file it goes berzerk. I've even run a virus scan on it and it's clean.

Any ideas on what I can do short of reformatting?! HELP!

Comments

scottshackrock wrote on 8/25/2004, 9:38 PM
yeah...sometimes stuff like this just happens...

If I remember..it's really hard to force delete a file like this with dos. So I think you should first: try to delete it normally - in SAFE mode though. (hit F8 repeatedly at startup). If it still crashes your system like that, do a search on google for one of those "force delete" prgrams. I've had one before, and most are really small freeware things. You just tell it what you want deleted, then reboot, and it's gone and perfect when your comp comes back on. I wish I could remember the name of the one i used, it was so simple. Maybe somebody on here can tell you more though. I'll search and tell you if i can find it too though.
GmElliott wrote on 8/25/2004, 9:47 PM
Will XP recognize my external drive in safe mode? Thanks.
kentwolf wrote on 8/25/2004, 10:17 PM
>>Will XP recognize my external drive in safe mode?

If your drive is on the motherboard IDE controller, it should recognize it just fine.

If it's attached to an add-in IDE controller card, depending on how the driver is loaded, it may not, but I think based on the way most things work today, it probably would recognize it.

If you can see the drive in Windows-not-booted DOS, Windows, even in safe mode, should detect it as well.

Update: I just read this a little closer. When you said "external" drive, I was thinking "removeable" drive.

If it's firewire, I do not believe Windows would see it. I do not believe firewire functions outside of booting to Windows. If your drive is in a housing, you could remove the drive from the housing, install it on one of your IDE cables, then you should be able to see it in Windows Safe mode.

Sorry for the confusion on my part.
stormstereo wrote on 8/26/2004, 12:31 AM
One method I use is: Open for example Notepad. Click File/Open and browse to the folder with the corrupt file. Choose to show All Files. Select the file and hit delete or right click/delete. For some reason this works most of the time, if not with Notepad then maybe with another program.

Best/Tommy
jetdv wrote on 8/26/2004, 6:46 AM
Sometimes this happens because Windows trys to "help" you and give you a preview of your files. So you click on the file, it starts previewing it, and now won't let you delete it because it's "in use". You can try deleting multiple files and see if that solves the problem. Of course, you could always try deleting from a DOS prompt.
johnmeyer wrote on 8/26/2004, 7:55 AM
Click on this link to read the Microsoft Knowledgebase article:

You cannot delete a file or a folder on an NTFS file system volume

You may also find this useful (somwhat redundant with above link):

Can't Delete Files or Folders