Can anyone advise me ...

I'm trying to delete ex-employees folders from the NT Server.

The trouble is that there is a 1kb 'Nul' file that I can't get rid of and hence prevents me deleteing the users folder.

I'm logged on as the Administrator on the Server itself, I've also tried logging on as the users themselves on my PC ... but still to no avail.!

I keep getting a pop up box saying:
"Cannot delete NUL: Invalid MS-DOS function."

Can someone tell me how to get rid of this file and then the folders themselves.

Many thanks

Try rebooting the server. I guess a handler is not releasing the file.

good luck

click right mouse-button on the file as server-admin logged-in. use options and get ownership (Besitz übernehmen, ich know only the german word)

afterwards you can delete it.

martin

Hmmm, I've come across this sort of problem before. The thing is that embedded in DOS and therefore carried over into Windows are some permanent file names such as LPT1, LPT2, Nul, Con, Prn etc. So if at a command prompt you enter:-
copy xxx.txt con - the file xxx.txt gets copied to con which is the console

If you enter:-
copy xxx.txt Prn - then it gets copied to the default printer. The 'nul' file was a way of dumping program output to a black-hole.

If you try deleting filenames like prn, nul, con etc the OS will generate an error. If the folder is on an NTFS volume I would suggest that you make sure that you have taken ownership and have granted yourself full access rights over the folder and sub directories. Having rebooted the server to release any locks/handles associated with this directory and contents, bring up a command prompt and switch to the appropriate path and enter:-

DEL *.* and see if that clears the entry.
You could also try something like:-
REN * *.txt which should attempt to rename it and maybe then you can delete it as normal. The thing is to not use the keyword 'nul' in any command such as:-
DEL nul

It should be impossible to create a file with a name such as 'con' 'prn' 'nul' etc but some error has occured which has allowed this to happen.