aslakson@cs.umn.edu (Brian Aslakson) (12/28/90)
Although I hate disclaimers with a passion... I have never tested the following,
and I got it off the net from someone who had gotten it off the net, but did
not attribute the original author. But it looks to be a method for dealing
with the Folder From Hell(tm) problem. The solution I used the one time I had
a problem, involved using StuffIt, but you don't want to hear about that.
Anyway, this trick sounds good.
Quote:
Subject: HELP!!! The Folder From Hell
GY> An install procedure for a utility created (what seems to be)
GY> an infinite series of nested folders with the same name. If
GY> I try to put the highest level folder in the trash, I get an
GY> error from my Mac Plus "Not enough finder memory" (or something
GY> bogus like that) and the folder (from hell) is placed back where
GY> it was before I attempted to toss it.
GY> The folder, and the folders within are definitely unique (ie
GY> the nesting is not recursive). I tested this out to a depth
GY> of over 100 folders. I can move files in and out of the folder(s)
GY> from hell, and move any folder to the desktop. The damn things
GY> are very annoying.
GY> Does anyone have any ideas (besides backing up all my data and
GY> re-formatting the disk)?
As this is of general interest, and comes up now and again, let me post something
that I captured from the net awhile back and does work, without doubt:
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I've had these kind of folders around for some time too ... until
yesterday! Thanks to some almost correct suggestions that came
accross the net, I DID get rid of them. The procedure I followed was:
1.) Make absolutely sure there were no invisible/locked files in the
folder by using MacSnoop to verify emptiness. (You can use several
other tools as well like ResEdit.)
2.) Rename the folder(s) to HellFolderN or something you KNOW is
unique on your disk where N is 1, 2, etc. for as many
HellFolders as you have. By renaming them all you will only
need search the disk once in the steps below to fix all of
them.
3.) Using MacSnoop (or some other suitable disk editor), open the disk
volume and do an ASCII search for the string HellFolder (without
the appended digit).
4.) If the string HellFolderN is immediately followed by 0100 0000 XXXX
hex, then change XXXX to 0000, this is the valence word in the
directory entry (the 01 tells you it is a directory entry).
NOTE: the 00 following the 01 and the 0000 need not be zeros but
they always were in my cases, these are reserved and flag bytes.
5.) Repeat steps 3.) and 4.) for **ALL** occurrences of HellFolder to
be found on the disk. This step is necessary since directory
entries get moved around and you want to make sure you get the
active one and not just some fragment left somewhere on the
disk. The searching will take some time if you have a large
disk.
6.) Quit MacSnoop and immediately reboot. (I think this is
necessary because the OS may be keeping the directory entry in RAM
or maybe the disk RAM cache is responsible. All I know is I
had to do it to be able to trash the folders.)
7.) After rebooting the HellFolder(s) should be trashable! (They were
for me.)
If you feel squeemish about this, back up your disk first and practice
on a floppy looking for the directory entries as described above.
If this works for you, post a note to the net so that others may feel
more confident in using the technique and BY ALL MEANS post corrections
if you think I described something incorrectly.
Good Luck!
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Unquote.
Brian Aslakson
aslakson@cs.umn.edu
mac-admin@cs.umn.edu <-= Macintosh related
--
This is my favorite post of the week.