Hi all, I am working on Windwos Server 2003 machine and have full admin privileges, including on the whole drive on which I am trying to delete this Folder and sub-folders. The folder was used to store a large number of iso's, msi's and exe's to be transported later to a FTP server on the network. The largest file in the Folder cluster is 4.09GB and has been misbehaving since it was downloaded. All files have been virus scanned by multiple solutions prior to being uploaded to the Server. Today I tried to add some more files to the ones that were already there using a USB drive with about 8GB of extra data on it. I met immediately with an "Access Denied" error on the whole internal file structure, more than 2 folders deep from the root folder on the drive. I checked the permissions on the Folder, called "FTP" and it shows that I have full permissions to the Folder and all sub-folders. I attempted the write operation again and got the same error. I then attempted to force the permissions on the parent folder onto the child folders and got an "Access Denied" error again. I have also tried to delete the folder using cmd and no success, even when run as administrator. I would prefer not to have to reboot the Server into "Safe Mode" to attempt to delete it that way if that is possible as it is a production system. If that is the only chance though, more than happy to do it. Have run virus scans on the system and all seems clean using Symantec Endpoint. Any help is greatly appreciated. Cheers, Kai Heimann

Maybe if you take ownership over the folder and its children? If you suspect having conflicting permissions configured you can use the "effective premissions" tab to review the final result of all permissions configured. If these things do not bring you closer to the solution, the filesystem itself may be corrupted. You can use chkdsk to validate and repair the filesystem.MCP/MCSA/MCTS/MCITP

Hi Senne, thanks for the quick reply. Taking ownership of it has been done and was unsuccessful. The "effective permissions" on the root folder are correct and also any of the internal ones that were checked. All other files and folders on the drive in question behave perfectly normally in so far as we can find. Happy to try chkdsk on it, just curious as to why the permissions in this case are not being applied in the "real" world. Have you got any other ideas as to how I might be able to wipe this naughty little folder of my disc. Reboot is not the prefered option here. Cheers, Kai Heimann

Hi, I understand that you are in a production environment, however, sometimes a restart will resolve the issue. By the way, you may use “rd /s/q” command to delete the folder to see whether it works. Best Regards, Vincent Hu

Hi, thanks for that. I'll try that out in the morning, otherwise I'll see if a reboot at the end of the week will fix the issue. Cheers, Kai Heimann

It is also possible that some file is in use. You can use sysinternals process explorer tofind out which process has handles to the file (ie uses the file)MCP/MCSA/MCTS/MCITP

Hi Senne, sure that it is not a file in use issue as the files are only resting on the disc and as yet have not been assigned to any service or are accessible in any other way, except through Explorer. I'll try the cmd to see if that will allow a removal or whether a reboot into Safe Mode will allow me to remove the files and folders. Cheers, Kai Heimann

Hi all, was on the box today and tried running rd /s/q D:\<root_drive_folder>\folder This came up with access denied again. Another admin rebooted the server into Safe Mode and similarly had no luck. Checked the effective permissions on the folder and all sub-folders and the account has full permissions. I assume that there are no file handles in play as they should have been destroyed in the Safe Mode exercise. I'll try running chkdsk against the drive in question and post back, but I must say that I am not hopeful. Edit: I checked the drive using chkdsk and it found some errors, all errors on the drive were fixed using /F and once I remounted the drive I was still unable to remove the directory. I am completely out of ideas, other than to ask if there is some means in Windows where I can view the file permission bits set on the directory in their unadulterated form, such as can be done using ls -lh in Linux. Cheers, Kai Heimann

As last resort, you can boot the machine using some boot cd (PE based ot linux based) with NTFS support and try to delete the files from there.MCP/MCSA/MCTS/MCITP

I too faced the same issue today. killed the explorer.exe and started it. Then was able to delete the folder.

Hi If the entire filename with the path of the file included exceeds 256 Characters, then you could also have this problem, attempt renaming the file