Remove found.000 folder completely

Question

I'm trying to completely remove found.000 folder under Windows 8.1 on my C-drive.

I have tried a number of attempts (incl. under SafeMode), by changing its ownership (i.e. added my Username, and added Everyone with full control) unfortunately failed to remove completely (part of subfolders successfully gone), rmdir /s /q gives Assess is denied. It's stuck with one of sub-folder with attrib +S +H, oddly which is view-able only under cmd for some reasons.

Much appreciated for any ideas? Screenshot is as attached.

Solution 1

The folder named "found.000" is from chkdsk, it puts these folders and files inside the folder when it finds corrupted fragments on the partition, instead of deleting them it puts them here.

Windows lists .CHK files as “recovered file fragments”. A single .CHK file can actually contain one or more complete files, fragments of a single file, or fragments of many files. unfortunately you usually won’t be able to recover much data from .CHK files.

The reason you are even seeing it is because you have "show hidden files" enabled in windows explorer. They usually aren't visable to the user.

Try manually deleting them from the command prompt with administrator privileges. Or you could just leave them, if the are small sized it isn't going to mess with anything.

If you keep on seeing new files created here, it could be a sign your hdd is starting to fail. It wouldn't be a bad idea to check it's smart status.

Solution 2

I've done this in Windows 10: open Command Prompt as administrator, then run this:

takeown /r /d y /f folder.000

to take ownership of the folder, and then:

icacls found.000 /reset /t

to reset the folder security to match the parent. Once reset you can open the folder using windows explorer or delete it like normal folders.

I had a lot of found folders, found.000 to found.082, so to change them all at once, I ran dir found.* /a /b to get the list of found folders, then using text editor I changed each line to be like above, then copy paste the whole thing to command prompt.

Comments

[rajeev]

Try booting thru a Live Linux CD/DVD/Pen drive and when your C drive is mounted in Linux, try deleting from therein.

[chrrrymx]

Guess this would be my next level attempt, as have attempted 3rd party packages, Lockhunter & UNLOCKER per thread, but no luck! superuser.com/questions/229563/… superuser.com/questions/438567/…

[chrrrymx]

Thanks for the comprehensive response Tim, Understood the left out found.000 folder was auto created by chkdsk, and I have backup it to external hard drive. Hence, my intention is to remove it from my OS C-drive. The odd bit I spotted the hidden subfolder (the one caused the error, per screenshot) was only viewable under cmd, dir /a, despite that my Win explorer has always been set to Show hidden files mode. Hence I briefly mentioned it. "Technically annoying" me is, unfortunately I've attempted the remove under SafeMode/Admin account/3rd Party packages without luck.

[chrrrymx]

Furthermore, I can see the issue maybe something to do with ownership security with the particular subfolder, named $Txf under found.000 per error screenshot. Its ownership & security properties don't be even changeable under cmd, with (OI)I switches, provided am on admin account.Nor having any problem with disk scan etc. You're so right about this can be ignored as now only few kb left out after my earlier "rmdir /s", but it is annoying... :(

[Tim_Stewart]

Are you able to rename them? Sometimes you can just rename it then delete. It's worth a try.

[chrrrymx]

I have indeed have tried rename and move commandline options, none of them work which is just so odd to me. I did also try to use dir /x switch to see if any weird characters contains within foldername... all before I raised my hand for Q.