Unable to delete folders (Windows XP Home SP3)

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There are two hard drives in my PC. C: and D: are in the first drive while F:, G:, and H: are in the second drive.

Windows does not allow me to delete the five folders in the H: drive. For example, when I right-clicked on the WINDOWS folder and selected Delete from the drop down list, there was no response from the computer. I can not remember why I have these five folders in the H: drive.

How to delete these five folders or format H: drive?

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I assume that both drives are internal and that the F:/G:/H: drives are all PARTITIONS on one physical drive. If you run Windows Explorer and right-click on the H: drive (partition) you should see a Format command in the context menu (see attachment). My only concern here is that you may have, by accident, directed some subset of Windows to use this H: drive since those folders look a little suspicious to me. If you’d like, you could do My Computer, Manage and open up Disk Management to show us a shot of the two physical drives in question. If on the other hand you’re perfectly sure that the H: drive can be zapped, format is right there for you to use.

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Hi Al,

Thank s for your reply.

Here is the screen shot of Disk Management. Disk 0 is a SATA drive. Disk 1 is an IDE drive.

If you do not have other suggestions, I will follow your instruction to format H:. However, to prevent disaster from happening, I will Ghost C: and H: before formatting.

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… to prevent disaster from happening, I will Ghost C: and H: before formatting …

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[/indent]Great idea! The thing that makes me a tad nervous is the presence of a Program Files and Windows folder on that drive. I have no idea what those “binary” named folders are, but it looks possible that something included in your Windows installation could be on that H: drive. Of course, it could also be an old erroneous install or something completely unnecessary. BUT, it will be good if you image the thing so you can get back to here if something of a troubling nature develops after you format.

Good luck and keep us posted…

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One more thing I just thought of to check. Open a CMD window and run the SET command with no parameters. Scan the resulting data carefully, looking for an H: in any of the paths shown. That might give us an idea if your OS is depending on something on that drive.

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HI Al,

What is ” SET command with no parameters”? The following is screen shot of the set command I entered. Windows gave me an error message.

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Sorry. In that Run window, type the CMD to open up a “DOS-like” command window. In THAT window, enter the set command.

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Hi Al,

Sorry. I made a mistake on the CMD window. Here is my SET command result. I don’t see anything related to H:, do you?

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Whew! I feel much better now! Nope, I don’t see anything worrisome to me. I pulled a little sneaky on ya and edited the above post to highlight the ones I was looking for and hoping to see.

I would still do the Ghost first, just for “belt and suspenders” safety. So again, good luck and keep us posted.

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Hi Al,

It takes only two second to format the H:. System runs stable after the format.

I really want to thank you for your effort in helping me. This two-second procedure spends you a lot of time.

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Ahhh, you must’ve done a “quick format” and you just taught me something then. I wasn’t aware that we could do a quick format like that. I’ve only ever done a full format, which takes some time. Have you confirmed that the folders are gone and the drive is now empty?

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Hi Al,

Since I scan the disks regularly, there is no need to use full format. I chose to use quick format on this procedure.

Yes, all the folders are gone and the drive H: is as clean as a new born baby.

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I’m a little late to the party and you and Al have had a busy morning and successfully accomplished what you were trying to do. I just wanted to add a thought to this discussion.

A safer way to “test” if the files on the H drive were an essential part of your Windows installation would have been to disconnect the drive with the H partition on it. Since it was on a different drive from the C partition, if the files were necessary, the computer would not have booted up if that HD was not in the loop and you wold only have to reconnect the drive to get things back to “normal”. No backup needed, no need to worry about doing anything to your OS installation.

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Hi Doc,

Thanks for your inputs.

I understand your point. However, if H: had nothing to do Windows installation, why Windows did not allow me to delete the folders? There must be some kind of link between these folders (or files) on H: to the Windows OS operation. It was the reason I did not want to format the H: before getting some expert opinions from this forum.

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Well, we’ll never know the answer but it seems to me that the problem probably was caused by the NAMES of the folders and how they got created in the first place. Windows was probablyy trying to “protect” because of the names. Perhaps at some earlier time you tried to do a repair install or some other re-installation effort that created the stuff on the wrong drive. What’s important now ( ) is that your system doesn’t “hiccup” in the next couple of days…

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I had composed a reply, but got sidetracked and noticed when I got back to it that Al had answered much the same way I had. I think those were orphaned files that Windows saw as system files because of their names and was protecting you from yourself. But if the system works OK now, that is what’s important and not how you got there. How you got there only matters when things go wrong.

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