"cannot delete 000000000.: Cannot find the specified file.

[Trent Steel]

I am trying to clear out a directory left over from Norton Antivirus 2004 and I have a bunch of files that cannot be deleted, it gives me the exact same warning as above for each file. How can I delete these files, and the whole directory?

[EzyStvy]

Try rebooting.

[bozo]

Norton is a bugger to get rid of completely, They do have a removal tool on their web site...but even that tool doesn't completely get rid of all the files.

I found a little program that will delete *anything*, called "Sure Delete"...be carefull...there is NO recovery using this program.

http://www.wizard-industries.com/

[Trent Steel]

Tried rebooting, tried rebooting into safe mode, tried deleting from the command prompt, all give the same warning of not being able to find the file. I was able to delete all the files in that directory that had an extension, but the ones that are stubborn are in this format 00000000. with no extension. I can't find the removal tool at symantec, but will keep on looking, I would rather not have to install sure delete, but I will look into it. Thanks


EDIT: Sure delet gets a code 75 error, invalid path/filename.

EDIT: Did a google search and came across this Microsoft knowledge base article
http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;320081
All you need to do is
del "\\?\c:\path_to_file\name_of_file_or_folder"
with quotation marks.

EDIT: That worked for most of the files, but there was four remaining, this got rid of them all

del "\\?\c:\path_to_file\*.*" /a

Hope that works for other people with tricky files.