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Posted by cwdjrxyz on 09/15/07 04:54
Over a year ago I had a crash while processing a movie. This left me
with a file of unknown type with no extension(the icon with colored
dots) and 0 byte size indicated when you right click. When you try to
delete this file, you get a message that it is not possible since
Windows can not access it on the disk. In most cases the best thing
would be to just leave such a bad file alone, since it takes little
space at 0 bytes. However when you defrag the C-drive that the bad
file is on, you find this unknown file will not defrag, is about 4 GB
in size, and consists of over 1000 fragments(red lines scattered all
over the display). What apparently happened is that 4 GB was reserved
for the file before the crash(DVD movie files are huge), and this
information is retained after the crash, despite there being no file
of useful data. I tried all sorts of methods to remove the file using
various programs suggested in some groups, including this one, and on
some sites located with Google. Until recently I found nothing that
would work. Very recently I heard about a pay program that might work,
and there was a very complicated method that might work. I finally
solved the problem.
If you are on the XP with the bad file called MOVIE without an
extension contained in a directory we will call directory/MOVIE the
directory can be moved to another location on the C drive, but the
bare MOVIE file can not be moved alone. If you have administrator
rights as user, it is easy to set up another user. So set up another
user with administrator rights, which I called Moe. Do as little as
possible in setting up this user. When Moe is ready to go, sign into
Moe, and since it has administrator rights, it can access the C-drive
which includes all of your main account files including directory/
MOVIE. Move directory/MOVIE to one of Moe's directories such as
MyDocuments. Then sign out of Moe and go back to your usual account.
Then delete Moe's account, selecting not to retain any of Moe's files.
The bad MOVIE file is now gone, the C drive defrags properly, and I
have gained about 4 GB of HD space on C that was tied up by the
reservation of space for MOVIE that never was properly used because of
the crash.
I wasted far too much time on this problem, and I hope the solution
will be of use to others who are unfortunate enough to have the
problem. The technique used might or might not work on other OSs after
modification needed for another OS.
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