Windows – a “0-Namespace-http” file and how to delete it

windowswindows 8windows-explorer

I am trying to delete some files from a rescued user's profile folder from previous installation of Windows 8. I'm talking about the files that are normally located at C:\Users\Someone. I have copied this user's entire profile folder to drive D and then re-installed Windows. Now after installing Windows, I have taken out all the good stuff from this folder and I just want to get rid of the rest. But Windows is giving me some crap about source path being too long.

There are three files it has problems digesting. Their names begin like this…

0-Namespace-http
0-HomePageData-https
0-ReviewList-https

The rest of the characters in the file names are just gibberish (or at least to me they are). Here, let the screenshots speak for themselves.

a
b
c
d

  1. What are these files?
  2. Why is Windows having problems with them?
  3. That checkmark kind of looking icon for the file seems to resemble
    the Symantec Norton icon. Norton Internet Security is installed on
    the computer. Could that be what's causing this?
  4. What are those crazy characters that look like a dollar sign, what
    do you call them? And what's the one that looks like an equality
    sign but with dots on top and bottom?
  5. How can these characters be legal for a file name in Windows?

I have seen a few methods for deleting files and/or folders with too long search paths here on SU. So I will try some of those. Hopefully one of those methods will get rid of them. I'm just wondering what these files are and why this is happening to begin with.

Delete – Method 1

The first method failed…
e

D:\Rescued user profiles>rmdir /s "support"
support, Are you sure (Y/N)? y
support\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Store\Cache Medium IL\0\0-Namespace-htt
s???services.apps.microsoft.com?browse?6.2.9200-1?615?en-us?c?SE?Namespace?pc?0
000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000?00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000.dat - T
e file name is too long.
support\AppData\Local\Packages\WinStore_cw5n1h2txyewy\AC\Microsoft\Windows Stor
\Cache\0\0-HomePageData-https???next-services.apps.microsoft.com?browse?6.2.920
-1?670?sv-SE_sv-SE?c?SE?cp?10011709?HomePageData?pt?x64?lf?1?os?Core?OEM?DM.dat
- The file name is too long.
support\AppData\Local\Packages\WinStore_cw5n1h2txyewy\AC\Microsoft\Windows Stor
\Cache\0\0-ReviewList-https???services.apps.microsoft.com?4R?6.2.9200-1?615?sv-
E?m?SE?Apps?c08a0d72-28a1-465a-9e70-6a5b80b44d60?Reviews?all?s?date?1?pn?1.dat
 The file name is too long.

D:\Rescued user profiles>

The AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Store\Cache Medium IL part reveals that they are Windows Store cache files. It's funny how they (MS) appropriately chose a naming scheme and file name length so that they cannot be removed should one ever need to.

Delete – Method 2

I tried the method posted over here and it worked. This is the recipe.

mkdir empty_dir
robocopy empty_dir the_dir_to_delete /s /mir
rmdir empty_dir
rmdir the_dir_to_delete

Complete CMD dump can be found here.

Best Answer