[Techtalk] undeletable files

[James Sutherland]

On Sat, 6 Mar 2004 13:56:55 -0600, Chris Moore <mcmoore at ev1.net> wrote:

> I have nearly 50 files that have been dropped on my slave drive with 
> strange symbols.  Two examples:   "911.req.ues"   and  "we'll.hel".  I 
> cannot delete these files. I am running XP  pro with DSL.   Has someone 
> hacked into my system?   Any suggestions on how to remove without 
> formatting the entire drive?

A FAT (16 or 32) partition, by any chance? This looks very much like a
corrupt filesystem: a chunk of data is being (mis)interpreted as the
directory listing. Trying to delete these "files" then fails, because
they don't really exist: they're just an accident. Under XP, opening the
Properties page of the partition in question and telling Windows to
"check the drive for errors" should fix this problem.


James.