Undeletable, unfixable, damaged files.

[bizzybody]

A couple days ago I had O&O Defrag set to defrag all four hard drives, reboot and do offline defrag of normally locked files then shutdown. Well during the night there was a power 'blip-out' that lasted just long enough to shut the PC down.

It mangled something in XP Pro to where it not only wouldn't boot up, trying a repair install or even a clean install would hang right in the middle. I had to use ERD Commander to move what I wanted to keep then wipe C: then install Windows.

THEN the other shoe dropped. Scandisk wants to check E:, the big 233gig drive. Says there's four damaged files and it'll fix them... and it just sits there forever doing nothing. Skip the boot time scan and try it from Windows, same thing.

Next I figure I'll see what I can do without on there and start with a folder of large videos of a TV series. Attempting to delete the folder hangs the system for a long time then it pops up with a cyclic redundancy check error. (I don't want to PLAY them, I want them GONE! Don't give a bleepityBLEEP if they're corrupted!)

Next step (after rebooting because XP's gone into frozen syrup mode), the Command Prompt. CD to the director and del *.* Takes a bit, it spits back 4 errors- at least the other files are gone.

But now I'm quite literally stuck with four almost 400 megabyte each files that are damaged yet for some silly reason XP is protecting better than if it was a mother bald eagle guarding her eggs!

Anyone have any idea why XP is determined that it can only delete *perfect* files? Am I going to have to resort to a partition table editor or something even deeper?

[phkninja]

did you try installing Unlocker. I have had problems with XP locking the file as soon as it boots (as there is no real version of DOS in XP, just an emulated version, you cannot boot to DOS to delete files without XP locking some files).

By using unlocker most of the "locked" files can be deleted. Other than that i would suggest maybe a DOS 6.22 (or other version of real DOS) boot disk and delete from there.

[Ponch]

maybe a DOS 6.22 (or other version of real DOS) boot disk and delete from there.

You'd have to use a 3rd party NTFS utility to read the drive.

I was wondering if (in the same way as using a BartPE disk) you could just use the delete command from Recovery Console (booting from XP CD) to get rid of the files ???

[phkninja]

Ah!!!! i forgot that some people like using NTFS just to make life difficult for those who have to fix it

I think that there are a few NTFS utility disks around that use FreeDOS, maybe one of them would help. But using a BartPE disk might help, since it loads to RAM and should allow access to the files on the HD

[sam13484]

You might try this little program. It's always worked for me:

http://www.softwarepatch.com/software/moveonboot.html

[IceBlackIce]

Try this

http://www.purgeie.com/delinv/

[RJARRRPCGP]

Attempting to delete the folder hangs the system for a long time then it pops up with a cyclic redundancy check error.

Sounds like a bad sector, but more likely a "soft bad" sector. A "soft bad" sector isn't a true bad sector, according to one of the folks at HDDGuru, it's a sector with corrupted ECC information.

To get rid of a "soft bad" sector, just wipe the HDD with zeroes.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Other than that i would suggest maybe a DOS 6.22 (or other version of real DOS) boot disk and delete from there.

Buzz! You can't do that, MS-DOS 6x don't even support FAT32! It supports FAT16 only!

[bizzybody]

I don't want to wipe the drive because I have other video files on there (that I hope are still OK) I want to keep and don't have enough room anywhere else to move.

Unlocker saw nothing having a handle on them so I chose Delete and clicked OK to have them deleted on reboot. That didn't work.

DelInvFile couldn't do a **** thing to the files.

Same story for GiPo's move on boot. Can't do squat with it due to CRC error.

WTF good is a filesystem that provides absolute protection to BAD files?! What it *should do* is when it finds a bad file that can't be fixed is offer to DELETE IT, no mercy, no quarter and with extreme prejudice.

Does Vista share this STUPID 'feature'?

[phkninja]

RJARRRPCGP~ Thanks

Did you not see my post after taht suggesting FreeDOS and NTFS tools?

Some of us havent slept this week, and will sometimes forget that DOS 6 only supported FAT16. The only reason i suggested DOS 6.22 was it was the last version of real MS DOS. I did say

or any other version of real DOS

which doesnt restrict you to using MS DOS, this includes PC-DOS, FreeDOS etc.