3L33T DOS WIZARDS- need help

Well WinD0ZE has struck Again.
(using Win 95 b OSR 2 & DOS v7.0; primary HD is partitioned into C & D drives)
The problem is this:
Have a file/folder on D drive named "DIR00001". It's sucking up MB's of HD space. Apparently(from my research) this file is where WinD0ZE Scandisk puts errors it can't resolve/fix. I want to delete/ get rid of this file/folder. Have'nt been sucessful so far.
All my programs & data on C & D drives is accessable & APPARENTLY functioning.
This is what I've tried.
1) Checked HD & all puter's hardware components with "Check-It" diagnostic utility> ALL components passed.
2) Re-ran Scandisk in normal & safe mode, many times> no fix

The error message Scandisk keeps giving me is as follows:
"The size of the D:\DIR00001\AAAAAAA.AAA file is being misreported" , "The directory entry for D:\DIR00001\AAAAAAAA.AAA is dammaged."
[Duh ]

When I check this directory in DOS with this command
"D:>DIR00001>DIR"
I get the following:
I get a scrolling listing of all the 'AAAAAAAA.AAA files & the following DOS command line message:
"12,819 files 13,321,397.17 MB
2 DIR(s) 13,246,464 bytes free"
Apparently DOS does recognize the file's size when Scandisk/WinDOZE can't.

I tried deleting this file/folder using DOS with the following commands:
(booted puter in safe mode) then
1) C:>attrib D:\DIR00001 -r -a -s -h/s
to delete all file attributes
then
2) D: DIR00001> DEL *.*
to delete all files
then
3) C:>deltree D:>DIR00001
to delete the directory
commands 1& 3 'worked'/returned me to a clean C prompt.
command 2 just hangs (ie, no effect/deletion); also tried substituting "DEL AAAAAAAA.* " for command 2 (it still hangs-no effect/deletion).
then
exited DOS & rebooted puter in normal mode.

PROBLEM: The file/folder is still there!!!! (both in WinD0ZE & DOS)

Any DOS advice on how to get rid of this file/DIR???
What am I missing???

If no DOS fix is possible, can I reformat HD "D" only & save my OS & other installed programs??

Please-only give advice if you'r SURE & it's safe to do what you recommend.
Thanks
RG

 

Typically this is created by scandisk in the attempted recovery of a directory.

If your D drive doensn't have any sensitive data on it that you want to keep then you need only to put a boot disk in the machine and type

format d:\

 

Hm. I'm wondering if a boot disk for a higher version of windows might work. 98SE or ME. Try running that version of scandisk. Specify both the "/autofix" and "/nosave" flags. This should ensure that scandisk doesn't play stupid and try to save the files again.

You could also try deltree in 98 (in 95 it just called del and rmdir in a given order), but that probably won't work either.

If you have enough free space, copy all the good folders off of D: to C:, and run a format d: /q to format the drive quickly. This will just erase the FAT table, and won't take 10,000 years if it is a 60BG drive.

You could also try changing to the bad directory and typing "copy *.* NUL" This open the file and then immediately closes it. It should also terminate it if it has an error. NUL is a system device that means nothing, so literally, this is copying the files to nothing. It makes DOS open the file, parse all the way through it, and close it again.

Or maybe some non-MS-DOS like FreeDOS or DR-DOS.

Oh, hey. I just thought of using ATTRIB to make sure that the directory/file isn't hidden, system or read-only.

 

Back again
Tried the following(see Above):
1) ran Win ME boot disk & Scandisk on D HD > got this error message "not enough memory to perform task" (this file is huge-apparently over my 128MB RAM limit)
2) used command " D:>DIR00001>copy *.* NUL " > puter just ran for 20 minutes; scrolling the files in the directory. Apparently DOS really can't find the end/size of this file due to the corrupt data.
then CTRL + C out of the command
OK, should I just give up & reformat the D**ed thing?? Is Norton utilities an outside possibility for a fix??

If I re-format the D HD is this the EXACT proceedure & command to use??
(boot from boot disk) then from the 'A" prompt
" A:>format D:\ "

or is
" A:>format D:/g "
command safer??
PLEASE show exact syntax with spaces, so I get it precisely right
Thanks
RaG

 

"Not enough emeory" might mean a lot of things, but it should have worked regardless, so Im going to ignore it.

From what I can tell, it doesn't look like there isn't one huge file in your DIR0001 directory, but a whole lot of very small files. If you want to try the "copy *.* NUL" thing again, you can try typing "smartdrv" first. That's a disk caching software that should make it go quite a bit faster.

However, the easiest thing for you would be to format.. If you type

Code:

format /?

at a command prompt, you will get instructions on how to use it.

You can type

Code:

format d:

to do a normal format. I'm not familiar with the "/g" switch, so it probably won't do anything (or make format error and yell at you). Once the format starts, do not try to break out of it just because it takes too long. Doing so means you'll just have to start the same process all over again. Formatting takes a long time on big drives.

Again, make sure you copy off everything on that drive you want. Recovering a formatted drive is basically impossible.