File killing

I've just formatted my C drive and I'm tryingh to strip out stuff on my D and E drives that doesn't need to be there. There are a load of service pack and patch files in a WU Temp folder on my D drive that I can't shift for some reason. Any ideas how I get shot of these? If I don't it'll fool the windows update thingy into thinking I already have these updates won't it? Even if not it's hard drive space being used up by stuff I don't want on there and I want to go back to 1st base in patching and updating anyway to be sure I've got it right.

There is also a corrupt file from the game Thief the Dark Project that renamed itself and nothing I do seems to be able to delete it. I'm pretty confident it isn't virus infected but for some reason it doesn't want to go. Any suggestions?

Cheers
T

 

(Stupid 3 minute limit! Even stupider can't just hit back to grab what you just typed in!!)


Better just add that the PC I am tinkering with isn't this one. I know better than to surf with an unpatched PC.

T

 

More info needed.

Are D and E physical drives or partitions on a single drive?

Regardless, if you have re installed the OS, the system will appear not updated to the MS update thingy.

 

D & E are partitions of the same physical hard drive.

Ok well even if the MS update thingy isn't effected by them I still want them off my D drive. Ditto for the corrupt game file on the E drive.

T

 

backup what you want to keep and delete all partitions. repartion and install windows again. best and most effective method. Next would be to goto a command prompt and type

attrib [filename] -r -a -s -h /s /d

if you don't know the file name you can use wildcards *.* but that will select all files in the current folder and all subdirectories under it. then try to delete the files.

 

Formatting those drives is the last resort surely?

File not found but it's very likely I'm typing the filepath wrong my DOS skills are appallingly rusty. What exactly am I doing anyway by typing that in?

Is there no app out there designed to remove stubborn files? Doesn't XP have some sort of built in means of dealing with this? (Probably not as it's an MS product)

Gotta be a no brainer solution to this.

T