We are having an occassional problem deleting some files or folders from our NT 4.0 server. Here's what we know: We've taken ownership, reset the permissions, checked the file attributes. They're not shared or in a Macfile Share. They have no illegal characters and are not nested too deeply. The file names are not too long. They are not showing as in use in Server Manager. The message we get is Access Denied- the file is open or in use. We're running SP6a. We are sometimes able to delete these files from a DOS prompt, but not always. We also cannot rename these files- we get the same error message. Any ideas?

Reboot!

Agreed!

We have rebooted many times. Also, the files are of no particular type and are sometimes even empty folders. I think it may be corrupt files/folders.

It depends what files these are. Often I have seen that some files are not deletable because the moment after reboot the files you are trying to delete are tied up by the system. If I really want to delete a file I create a boot up disk, boot up with it and delete the files. Of course with NT you need an NTFS file reader on your boot disk. If you can tell me more about these files (application files? directory location?) then maybe I can suggest something to you. In the past I have had to disable services from starting then reboot the server/workstation then was able to delete the files.