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Can't delete a folder(s) created by Amazon MP3 Downloader

Some context:
I used the Amazon MP3 Downloader (A3D)earlier today to download 4 different "albums" of music from Amazon.com using the latest version of Google Chrome. One of the albums downloaded with an error, reported by the A3D program, that it couldn't import the album into Windows Media Player. One of the options in this downloading software is to 'View Download Folder'. When I did this, nothing happened for the album that had a problem. The other 3 worked fine. Please note here: this album was the 3rd out of 4, so the 4th worked fine, too. When I used Windows Explorer to go this directory, I could not open the directory. An error window pops up named 'Location is not available', i.e., "<path of directory in question> refers to a location that is unavailable. . . .". This on a new laptops boot drive that has plenty of free space. I'm running Windows 8 -- latest version.
I contacted Amazon. After 2 hours, they had a workaround that involved only using Internet Explorer and downloading the files as you would any old file on the network, i.e., so I could save the files to any directory. 

The problem is, they had me change the preference in the A3D to 2 other file locations so now I have 3 of these folders that I can't open, move or remove! Is there some tool built-into Windows 8 that will help me with this? I've of course tried rd, but also when to the parent directory and tried rd /s, which didn't work either. Other ideas? The weird thing is the directory name is:
Legacy (Ethnomusicology @ Ucla Artist Series, Vol.

I have my old laptop still running Windows Vista and tried this with Vista: it works fine, but the directory it creates is named:
Legacy (Ethnomusicology @ Ucla Artist Series, Vol.1

It's almost like there is some hidden character in the file name that I can't access, and is NOT something Windows supports so I can't remove the 2 mp3 files that are below the directory that is having a problem.

Anyone seen this before? It would suck if I had to blow away my install of Windows 8 to fix this; of course, after using Windows 8 on a laptop w/o a touch screen, I'd much rather just have Windows 7 anyway . . .

 

Hi,

 

Thank you for posting your query on Microsoft Community Forums.

 

To help you better, please provide information on this question:

Have you tried to take the ownership of the file and folder so that you can delete them?

 

Kindly get back to us with the information so that we can assist you better.

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The Properties>Security tab for these folders has a small red circle containing a white 'x', followed by the following:
The requested security information is either unavailable or can't be displayed.

Given this, how would I take ownership of this folder?

BTW, I went to the parent folder of this folder and, even though I was already the owner, I took ownership, and told it to take ownership of all objects below this. I didn't receive any errors, but this didn't change anything with the problem folder.

Are there any tools in Windows 8 for looking at ACL's in the file system?

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I am experiencing this exact same problem. I downloaded the files without issue on my win7 Professional system. I've spoken with Amazon and they seem perplexed. Not sure what to do...

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Hi Bruce,

 

Thank you for sharing the information with us.

 

I would suggest you to follow the article provided to fix the issue:

 

"Access Denied" or other errors when accessing or working with files and folders in Windows

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2623670?wa=wsignin1.0

 

 

Please feel free to reply, in case you face any other issues with Windows in future.

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Vikrant,

I'm not sure what you didn't understand about my last response to you? The security tab is not usable!
What your reply has done has wasted my time and the poor other bloke that is looking for a fix, too!

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Caleb,

How comfortable are you with Linux? If you follow this, please, make sure you do a complete backup of your PC *first*!!!
I remembered someone else telling me that some of the Linux Live CD's out there can actually r/w to an NTFS file system. I poked around and found one that looked promising called "System Rescue CD":
http://www.sysresccd.org/SystemRescueCd_Homepage
Follow the download link to download an .iso file from SourceForge
You'll then need to download/install a copy of ImgBurn so you can write the .iso to a CD
(http://www.imgburn.com/index.php?act=download)
Since I have a new machine with Windows 8, I had to change the BIOS so I *could* boot off a CD; (Note to Microsoft: really?):
Once I booted off of the CD, it puts you at a linux shell. I ran 'startx' to start the GUI, then ran a terminal program (in the system tray) to give me a command prompt under the GUI.
From here, I looked for an (NTFS) partition. To do this, type:
cat /proc/partitions
Good grief moment: along with the Linux partition, there must have been about 8 other partitions! Since this is a new Windows 8 machine, I surmised these other partitions must be NTFS, but probably not all of them!
To mount an NTFS partition, you have to use the 'ntfs-3g' command. The default usage is:
ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /mnt/windows
I did this, and, hey -- it mounted the sda1 partition. I cd'ed to this directory, but evidently it was a "recovery partition". Using the 'umount' command, I unmounted this:
umount /mnt/windows

(btw, for either umount, ntfs-3g, rm, etc., you can use 'man ntfs-3g' to look up more information on a particular command.
From here I tried mounting each partition listed, none of which worked, until I did sda4.
When I cd'ed to /mnt/windows, there were all of the normal Windows directories! Hooray!
I set about finding the directories that were bad, aka, you couldn't enter or remove. It ends up there were still files in these directories! I ended up going to the parent of the bad directory and using the rm command. This command is dangerous, especially if you use the recursive option, so tread lightly here. The command I used was:
rm -r "bad directory name"
It recursively removes all files/directory below/including the level you specify.
I was prompted to remove each inaccessible file, plus the bad directory.
Since I had had Amazon support helping me, I had 3 of these bad directories created.
I was able to remove them *all*! Hip, Hip, Hooray!
From there you then logout of the GUI. It will put you at the command prompt. Use 'shutdown 0' and follow the instructions. It will come back to the command prompt. Use 'shutdown 0' again and, again, follow the instructions. It will come back to the command prompt again. Power off your machine. Power on and remove the CD and you should be back in business.

On reflection, there were some serious problems with the process of solving this problem:
1. Amazon support had no clue what was wrong. They didn't see a problem at their "end" so their last ditch help was to allow me to download files w/o automatically creating a directory. This worked, but as you found out, it doesn't get rid of what they did to your machine.

2. Windows 8 -- in your case 7 -- allowed Amazon's app to somehow create a folder that shouldn't be allowed in the file system! After all, they're using your .Net API to do this stuff, Microsoft, and you'd hope that the file system stuff would be rock solid!

3. Given the help from MS on this, i.e., "change ownership" -- not so sure I wasn't headed to reformatting my drive and reinstalling Windows 8! Where are the tools to deal with problems like this? Of course, with Windows 8, at least from Samsung, there is NO DVD to boot from to run tools from. I'm still not sure how I re-install my OS -- there is no DVD, or activation code either!

4. How can I possibly report this bug to both Microsoft and Amazon? Good luck with these huge corporate overlords! But I suppose, if we just move our data to the cloud and use smart phones and tablets, everything will run *perfectly* . . . 8^}

5. Windows 8? I'm so unhappy with it. How I wish I had Windows 7, like you. I even called the vendor of my laptop (Samsung) and they don't support installing Windows 7. I suppose I'll live with it, but am seriously thinking about either installing Linux, or dumping this and getting a Mac!

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I ran into the same issue on a Windows 7 laptop, here's how I fixed it:

 

Start Command Prompt with Administrator rights (right-click Start as Administrator)

CD to the directory below what you want to eliminate

(In my case CD \Users\Owner\Music)

 

The command prompt will treat a directory name with spaces as separate files, so you need to rename the undesired directory to a name with no spaces

 

(In my case, from Explorer: right-click "Amazon MP3" and choose rename - I chose to rename it to "junk")

 

Okay, back in the command line:

rmdir /S junk

(Answer with a CAPITAL Y, anything wlse will be considered as "no")

 

POOF! gone!

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Forgot to mention, I did not delete the directory with messed up rights, I trnamed and deleted its parent.

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Last updated April 4, 2021 Views 1,995 Applies to: