Dan: I'm pretty sure you're dealing more with serious directory corruption than anything else. And I don't think any of the regular tricks will work, as you've found out.
IIRC, whenever I booted from a CD, I could delete the file but it returned when I restarted from the hard drive. Here's what I would try. 1. Back up all your essential data. 2. Do a clean install of OS9. You should be able to delete the old system folder taking the bad file with it. You've got a 50-50 chance of this working, but I think you may be looking at a reformat and reinstall. I'd also look at replacing the old drive. Sorry about that. rob Dan Crutcher wrote: > On one of our G3 iMacs at work we have a corrupted file that is causing > some problems and I cannot find any way to get rid of it. > > Doing a "Get Info" shows that the file is 833 GB, which would be seem > rather impossible on a computer with a 5 GB hard drive, but that's what > it says. This file started life as a printer preference file, but I > have since renamed it "Bad File." > > If I drag it to the trash and try to delete it, I get a "File is in > use" error message and it won't let me empty the trash. Holding down > the option key while emptying the trash does not work either. Nor can I > replace the file with another file of the same name (also gives a "file > in use" message). Norton's freezes up when it tries to deal with this > file. TechTool 3.5 recognizes it as a bad file, but says it can't > repair it, as does Disk Aid. > > Does anyone have any secret tricks for deleting undeletable files? > > The iMac is running OS 9.1. > > Dan > > > > | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will > | be April 27. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>. > | This list's page is <http://erdos.math.louisville.edu/macgroup>. | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will | be April 27. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>. | This list's page is <http://erdos.math.louisville.edu/macgroup>.
