Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!hplabs!hp-ses!hpdml93!kmarko
From: kmarko@hpdml93.HP.COM (Kurt Marko)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: My machine is possessed - Folder from Hell
Message-ID: <15000001@hpdml93.HP.COM>
Date: 8 Feb 90 15:42:43 GMT
References: <15543@orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU>
Organization: Hewlett Packard - Boise, ID
Lines: 31

I've had one of these ``undeletable'' folders and have done some
poking around to discover the problem.  I had tried all of the 
steps mentioned in a previous posting, short or reinitializing 
my hard disk, and could still not delete the folder.  Here are
some other interesting symptoms.

-- Disk First Aid will not verify the hard disk (although 
everything, including other disk utilities, works fine on 
this disk).

-- When trying to open a ``file'' in this empty folder via
the Standard File Dialog (out of an application), when opening
the folder, one gets ``popped'' back up to the root level
of the disk.  It's as if the file hierarchy is circular, and
that the ``contents'' of this folder is the root.  This 
would explain why the folder is undeletable, since there are
always open files at the root level (e.g. Desktop, System, etc.).

-- From the above observations you would expect that by booting
off of a floppy, under uni-Finder, you could use a tool such
as ResEdit to clear this folder.  I tried, and I couldn't.

This definitely appears to be a ``low-level'' corruption of
the file system.  The folder acquired these demonic properties
after a bomb while testing a program I was working on out of
MPW, so the scenario fits.  If anyone else has some observation
about this type of problem, I'd be interested in hearing about
them.

Kurt Marko
kmarko@hpdml93.hp.com