Deleting XP generated files - How to ??

edion2

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Jul 15, 2011
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Hello,

I'm sure this question has come up before.

I just bought a new laptop with Win 7. All my external drives have many folders with strange names that I can not delete. I get an "access denied" and I can't do anything about it.

These are all under the root directory. There are so many of these "computer generated" folders that its become difficult to find the folders that I created. These folders look like "re5jkf8867jv89nu76ddr7jk87". . . just gibberish :fou:

When I hook up my external drive to my new laptop with Win 7, they all show up with a "padlock" in the folder icon and I can not delete them.

What are these files ????
Why can't I delete them ???
How important are these files ???
Why are there so many of them ???

I have been using my Win 7 laptop for about a month and I'm pretty sure Win 7 is not generating files like these.

Can anyone help me ?

Thanks
Ed
 

Have you tried taking ownership of a folder / file ?
http://www.bing.com/search?q=take+ownership+win7&form=MOZSBR&pc=MOZI
 

edion2

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Jul 15, 2011
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18,510
Yes I have. As far as I know, I changed permission to ALL users to FULL ACCESS. I am signed on as the administrator too.

As a stop gap solution . . . I copied all my files to my internal drive, then I re-formatted my external drive, then moved all my files back to my external drive. That eliminated all XP generated files. BUT . . . if Win 7 starts to generate these strange files, I still don't know how to delete them . . . OR I'm not even sure if these files are safe to delete.

Thanks
Ed