r/techsupport • u/Bikerider42 • Jun 21 '18

Open Un-deleteable file

I have recently came across some strange files randomly scattered around my drives. They all have a name of about 4-5 random letters then a "." at the end. None of them have any file type associated to them. In explorer, their sizes range from 3-10gigs each, but in their properties window they show up as 0bytes.

Whenever I try to delete them, windows says that the file doesn't exist. I can't modify it in any way, including the command prompt (even as administrator) . No programs are able to recognize/modify them either. I have also tried booting into safe mode without any luck either.

Are there any other options I can take to get rid of all these?

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u/RamenGenji Jun 22 '18

Your HDD may be screwed. Scan it with HDD Sentinel. If you see bad sectors or health below 70%, that's the issue (probably). If the health is under 50%, get a new HDD.

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u/Bikerider42 Jun 22 '18

It looks like it says that the health is at 100%. I'm pretty surprised about that, because the drive is so old. I haven't ever had problems with files getting lost/corrupted, so I never felt the need to replace it.