I've had a windows failure and thanks to the tech support of MESH I am no longer able to access windows. As I have to return my computer to their warehouse I wanted to delete all the private files I have on it. However it appears that my Dos commands don't function even though initiallythey appear to. For example I type DEL filename and the file is deleted and the available space on the harddrive is shown to have increased. If I go to another directory and come back the file "reappears". If I use the attrib command to change a file from being read only, again it shows has having had it's attribute changed but then a second later reverts back to being read only. It's not due to incomaptiable dos versions as I had that problem initially (when I was booting from the emergency CD ROM) and at that time I was receiving error messages for External Dos commands. Once I realised what the problem was I booted from a startup disk I had created and that solved the incompatiablilty problem. Using MSdos 6 something (can't remember and not in front of my pc now - sorry!) Any ideas anyone? Thx!

If you boot from a Windows ME startup diskette, you should be able to delete the files. However, if the problem you described still happens, then it means there is a disk drive WRITE failure. That is, the changes are not being written to the disk drive. In that case, there is nothing you can do short of removing the disk drive from the system.

Wow - quick response Jack - thx! Yes I am booting from a Windows ME startup floppy. Makes sense as the original problem started with Disk Wirite Error Unable to Write to Disk in drive C (it the glorious days when I could still access windows!) I presume what you are saying is that I need to replace the harddrive. (Boo hoo) Is there no other possible suggestion? Many thx

Sounds like a fried hard disk to me. If you just want to keep your private files out of the enemy's hands, try format c: instead of del. If that doesn't work, try FDISK and delete the primary partition. Obviously only do this if you don't need the files off the disk any more. If you do need what's on there, you could put the hard drive into another computer (jumpered to slave) and copy the files over since that only involves reading from the drive and not writing to it. Anyway, just a few suggestions. Hope it helps. Lloyd

If none of the above works: A. Extremely strong magnet B. Extremely large hammer