.htm file that just wont delete

Panda

tried several things,
deleting the file, the folder its in,
renaming the file,
cutting the file,
deletion from dos, (and the folder that its in from dos)

still wont go away.

the .htm file is just a saved webpage that i downloaded during the year for a project.
the file name is really long, almost three lines in dos if that gives you any indication.
the reason its so long is because it saved the page header as the filename.

i think this is causing the trouble.

any suggestions?

dahamsta

It's not the long filename that's causing the problem, it's odd characters in it. Try some of the suggestions from this google search.

http://www.google.com/search?q=delete+long+filename

adam

kjt

Tried booting up in safe mode and deleting it?

Capt'n Midnight

if it has a .con. in it's name it can be very tricky to delete in NT-XP but easy in dos / win 9x ( .con is the console so funny redirect stuff )

try renaming it first

is_that_so

Put "quotes around it and delete" using DOS, also try using use the escape to take out the effect of any special characters
For example

E@ ~E becomes "E\@ \~E"

optiplexgx270

i had a bios update file like that

ended up using task manager ending explorer.exe the entire tree and then running cmd and deleting it that way couldnt load safe mode either

scion

Is the file read only???

jor el

Have a look for a program called WhoLockMe. This can tell you if an application is locking the file and preventing you from renaming/deleting it.

Panda

got rid of the one i set out to originally, but then i found more!
same story again, they're web pages that were saved and have their title used as their file name, which made them really long.
I'm sure this is the problem.
when i clicked on the files folder for the downloaded webpage it said i couldnt as the folder name was too long.
right clicking does nothing.

to delete the file i asked about, it tried it in dos and it didnt work so i went to safe mode and it worked.

when i came across these other files, i tried the same thing again and no joy....

they're just htm files and the file folders for the pages (images stylesheets etc.) they're not being used by any programs.

any other suggestions?

jor el

Well, you could delete all of them in safemode, but I guess you'd like to know why this is happening?

All I can think of is the way Windows links HTML files with the *_files folder which will have all the objects that were on the webpage when you saved it. You can use TweakUI (one of the powertoys for Windows XP available on microsoft.com) to unlink the file and folder. See a screenshot of where to do this:

This lets you manipulate either the HTML file or the *_files folder independantly of each other, or delete either one. This _might_ work, but I'd doubt it. It's the only thing I can think of though, short of safemode.