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This bugged me for a few weeks before I found a solution. I was creating a file through FireFTP but Firefox crashed in the middle and the file was “half-created”. It exists on the Windows desktop as an empty file but it did not seem to fully exist on the hard drive. It just sits there on my desktop titled “i dont have 8gb free” teasing me because it knows I can’t get rid of it.

When I tried to delete it I got an error message:

Cannot delete file. Cannot read from the source file or disk.

So I know the file isn’t in use by any processes — the computer actually can’t find the file I’m referring to!

Here are things I tried and failed:

• Deleting through command line.
• Changing file permissions.
• Renaming the file (same error as above).
• Overwriting the file from different programs.
• Rebooting in safe mode and deleting from there.
• Booting into a Linux Live CD, loading up the NTFS drive reader to access the file.
• Clearing processes that may have been using the file.
• Running full spyware and virus scans.

I was at my wit’s end and about to install some shady third party application when I came across a solution on a newsgroup post:

The solution was simple, using the del command in a command prompt. I had tried this already of course but the trick was to not refer to the file by it’s full name, rather, refer to it by its 8-character “DOS name” also known as the 8dot3 file name. To find the 8dot3 file name, open command prompt and type:

dir /x

Note the 8 letter file name (most likely ending with ~1) and use the del command to get rid of it for good.

del idonth~1

I remember using 8dot3 names in DOS and older versions of Windows but it never occurred to me that this would make any difference when deleting files. Anyway, I’m glad I didn’t have to reinstall Windows just to get rid of this one immutable file sitting on my desktop! Hopefully this will help some of you in the future.