Unable to delete file...

[Browncoat1984]

I downloaded the album Final Fantasy VII Voices of the Lifestream, went to delete the file under directory CD 4 - 4-09 One Winged Angel, and the file is marked as undeletable. It is marked as undeleteable in both the MP3 and Wav directories. I tried redownloading the album, same thing. Why is this file marked as undeletable and how can I delete it? Everything else deletes just fine.

[Majin GeoDooD]

Did you try opening a command prompt and deleting it that way?

[HalcyonSpirit]

You can't delete the file because the overall file path has become too long for Windows Explorer to do anything with. I had the same problem with something else. That file already has a long name by itself, so if you put it in a deep folder directory, chances are you've gone over the limit.

As for how to delete it... Majin's suggestion might work. I'm not sure how I fixed the problem myself; you might want to try going up a few folders and cutting it to a different location that isn't so deep.

If you re-download the album, make sure you save it to a folder that isn't so deep so you don't have the same problem again.

[phill]

If this is the problem, 256 characters is a stupid amount and you should really think about revising your download location...and naming practices...gah...

Solution to this problem is using the dos short names and the 'Del' Command. If you don't know what the short names would be, use the 'Dir /X' command to display them.

If the file name isn't 256+ characters long, something has locked the files and if a reboot does not work give 'unlocker' a try

http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/

[HalcyonSpirit]

If this is the problem, 256 characters is a stupid amount and you should really think about revising your download location...and naming practices...gah...

I tend to leave file names as they are when I download things unless they're incoherent. As for the folders, I'm rather insistent of keeping myself organized, and keeping everything within appropriate folders. As a result, I sometimes have a folder many folders deep. However, I make sure the folder names are rather short so I don't encounter these problems with full file path names. But when some idiot names their file with upwards of 100-150 characters... well, sometimes I forget to change the file name before I download it. Luckily, most of the time it's still beneath the limit, but just barely.

[phill]

I'm use to a network enviroment where you have to worry about server and share names on top of the file structure, and after seeing company data get fucked because projects would try to create file paths 300 or 400 characters long, i kinda got anal about it .

[Browncoat1984]

The files were saved to My Documents but I'm not sure how to get there from command prompt, I actually thought of that right after I I posted this. I'm using Azureus so its under My Documents/Azureus Downloads/Final Fantasy VII - Voice of the Lifestream, how can I get there from command prompt? I couldn't figure out the short name for My Documents. I tried rebooting into safe mode to see if I could delete it and when I went into My Documents it wouldn't show me anything in the folder (the folder was completely blank, even though I'm the only user on this computer and have administrative privleges).

And yeah, that naming scheme IS a little annoying because it has the names of the authors of the file as well as the track name itself and what track from the game it corresponds to. A suggestion: include a .txt file that has all the track names, who made them, and what they correspond to. Then for the actual file name keep it to simple, something like 1x01 - Deliverance of the Heart. Simple is good (sometimes, not always, but in the case of file naming, definitely yes).

[phill]

Yay command prompt.

first, to change directories, you have the mighty 'CD' command. Usually, My Documents will be in the 'c:\DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGS\<username>' folder. so you would type "cd c:\DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGS\<your username\my documents\Azureus Downloads\Final Fantasy VII - Voice of the Lifestream" WITH the quotes. dos doesn't like spaces so you need to include the quotes to make it work right.

Then dir /X to get a list of files with short name. You should notice the second last column has the first 6 letters of the file name a ~ plus a number. As simple as del abcdef~1.mp3 for each file you want to delete

[Browncoat1984]

The Unlocker Program worked, though I had to actually delete the folder since it wouldn't work on the file. Files are gone, thanks! I remember seeing that program before but couldn't remember what it was called, very handy program.

As for the command prompt, I'll keep the quotes thing in mind for next time I have to use it, I don't have to use it very much, the last time I used that sort of interfact heavily is back int he days when I had MSDOS with Windows 3.1, lol.