Windows – How to remove an infinitely recurring directory tree

windows

On one of our Windows 2003 file servers somehow someone or something managed to create infinitely recurring directory trees within some of the users' home folders, and they can't be deleted.

You wind up with something like this:

D:\Student\2012\user.name\servername\student\2012\user.name\servername\student\2012\...

And it continues infinitely as far as I've been able to tell.

Trying to delete the directory tree from the system it resides on results in "Error deleting file or folder: Cannot delete file: ". Trying to delete it from a Windows 7 system connected to the network share results in a "folder in use" error.

If you navigate down the directory tree as far as you go you eventually reach a directory that cannot be opened or deleted (if right clicked none of the standard options appear), however if you try to open the same directory from a share on another system it can be opened, however Windows Explorer becomes extremely slow.

I've tried the suggestions in this post, as well as booting the server with a Linux disc and trying to rm -rf the directory, neither worked.

It is a mystery.

Edit: I might also add that it's possible to rename the directories, just not remove them.

Best Answer

I also had an endlessly recursive folder that had been created by a java IDE, and I was unable to delete it in either Windows Explorer or at the cmd prompt.

However, when I installed git I also installed git-bash. In git-bash you can issue the command:

rm -rfd recursive_folder_name

and it will take care of it.

Related Solutions

Windows – NTFS: prevent/deny directory delete in a otherwise “personal” folder

OK. I can confirm that a user can delete a file (or remove an empty directory) without having write access to that file/directory if they have Delete Child access to the parent directory. If I was aware of this before, I had forgotten about it, but it is documented behaviour, e.g., see KB101651.

There are (at least) three ways to solve your problem:

Give the users Modify access instead of Full Control access to the parent directory. The only differences between Full Control and Modify are the Delete Child right (allowing the user to delete child objects) and the Write DAC right (allowing the user to change the permissions on the object, even if they are not the owner).
Set the permissions on the share to Modify instead of Full. This should have the same effect, but will only affect network users, not interactive users. One side-effect is that the users cannot change permissions, even on their own files.
Set the read-only flag on the child file/directory. The documentation is unclear on this point, but my testing (Windows 7) indicates that Delete Child does not allow you to delete files or remove directories with the read-only flag set. It also does not allow you to reset the read-only flag. Note that the Explorer GUI implies that the read-only flag has no effect on directories; in fact it prevents the directory from being removed. (It does not prevent new files from being written to the directory.) Addendum: the read-only flag does not prevent a directory from being moved.

Other notes:

You could explicitly deny the Delete Child right to the parent directory, but if the user has Full Control to the parent directory they could remove the deny entry.
Having Delete Child right on the parent directory does not allow users to delete files from the child directory or to remove the child directory unless it is empty. Addendum: it does allow users to move the child directory.

Windows – strange AppData directory\file will not delete

It turns out I was pointed at the answer in a post I found over on Stack Overflow:

How to delete a folder that name ended with a dot(“.”)

Command:

del "\\?\C:\Users\Manager1\AppData\OICE_15_974FA576_32C1D314_1A3\130544A4."

(now if only I understood the difference between Super User and Stack Overflow, you'd think someone with 35+ years of computer experience could figure it out)

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