How to remove long reiterating directories

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
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G

Guest

My XP Pro system locked up and I had to reboot. After it
fixed some problems, I noted that my "\Updates"
subdirectory became a reiterative subdirectory in
which "\Updates" occurs 30 times and then has some other
files and folders. Neither XP nor the command prompt will
delete any of this because the file name is too long.

How can I eliminate the problem without having to
reformat and reinstall?
 
Hi, Anonymous.

My WinXP Pro has just two Updates folders, both buried several levels deep
under Documents and Settings\...\Encarta Reference Library, in subfolders
with randomly-generated names. Each has a few dozen files totaling about 80
MB (mostly with names like 04A00010.its). I have NO \Updates top-level
folder in the Root - and no Updates\Updates... subfolders.

I don't know what caused all those folders to occur in your case. If you
want to delete them all in one fell swoop, you should be able to do it from
the Command prompt ("DOS" window). Just go to the parent of the top
...\Updates folder and type at the "DOS" prompt: rd Updates /s

The /s switch should delete the top-level folder and all its tree of
contents, including all subdirectories and files after you say Yes, I'm
sure.

This doesn't answer the question of what caused either the lockup or the
\Updates folders, though, or whether it could happen again. It does not
seem related to Windows Update; I've used WU regularly and have no Update or
Updates folder created by that.

RC
 
To David White

David this is a folder I created from the root to keep
copies of update files from all sources
("Creative", "Nvidia", "Nero", etc. so that I can copy
those files on CD and not have to spend hours on the net
to rebuild all these updates. As you must be aware almost
everything you put on your computer has updated files and
material.
 
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