my hard drive crashed a while back and i recovered about half the files using a recovery utility. the name escapes me right now. the other half of the files still exist, but they have no content. they are all corrupt. for example, if i open any one of the "corrupt" files in notepad, they are completely blank. how can i sort through these easily and delete all the files that dont work? checksum doesnt work because they still have different checksums... just one of the things i have tried.

Delete "Unremovable" File . http://www.xs4all.nl/~laar2002/tweak/delete-unremovable-file.html 1) Open a Command Prompt window and leave it open. 2) Close all open programs. 3) Click Start > Run and enter TASKMGR.exe 4) Go to the Processes tab and End Process on Explorer.exe. 5) Leave Task Manager open. 6) Go back to the Command Prompt window and change to the directory the undeletable file is located in. 7) At the command prompt type DEL where is the file you wish to delete. 8) Go back to Task Manager, click File, New Task and enter EXPLORER.exe to restart the GUI shell. 9) Close Task Manager. Another way . Delete undeletable files http://rogier.xszone.nl/windows/wintricks.html 1) Close all open programs. 2) Open a Command Prompt window. 3) Close Explorer.exe from the task manager (ctrl-shift-esc), leave Task Manager open. 4) Navigate to the folder with the undeletable file(s) in the command prompt window with the cd command. 5) Delete the file with del filename.ext 6) Reopen explorer.exe from the taskmanager. ===================================== You Cannot Delete a File or a Folder http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;320081 ====================================== Delete an Undeletable File in Windows XP http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_tweaks.htm Permission Denied - When Trying to Delete Folders/Files http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_d.htm#del Windows Explorer/Tools/Folder Options/View/Unmark "Use Simple File Sharing". Right click the folder/file in question/Properties/Security/Advanced/Owner/Set Permissions. HOW TO: Set, View, Change, or Remove File and Folder Permissions http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_abc.htm http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q308/4/18.asp

oh they are very removeable. i can just delete them. the problem is that there are thousands of them. any other suggestions?

Here is my file on Find / Search utilities . I use the 1st one myself , but another may suit your needs . Just a matter of highlighting blocks , Right click > Delete . ======================================= XP Search replacement > Find.zip http://www.shellfront.org/utils/ ============================ http://wilbur.redtree.com/ Fast Searches, Reasonable Index Sizes Once Wilbur has indexed your files, he can display all of the files containing a specific word or set of words almost instantly. It is able to do this while keeping its index file much smaller than that the alternatives we have looked at. Wilbur can optionally track information on all files on your disk, not just the ones whose content is indexed. The resulting file list can be sorted by number of hits, date, name, extension, size, attributes or path name. When a file is selected, the sought after word(s) are displayed in context in either compressed (just the lines containing hits) or expanded (all lines) format. ================================ Don't Like the "New and Improved" XP Search Window? Windows XP has a new style search window that asks "What do you want to search for?" and gives you a list of choices. If you prefer the old "Search for Files and Folders" search window from Windows 2000, you can get it back easily by downloading Tweak UI from the Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP web site at: http://www.winxpnews.com/rd/rd.cfm?id=030923TI-XP_Search After you install it, run the program and in the Explorer sub-menu, in the right details pane, check the box that says Use Classic Search in Explorer. No more search dog! ============================== Error Message: "A File That Is Required to Run Search Companion Cannot Be Found" http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q319949 http://www.onecomputerguy.com/windowsxp_tips.htm Search companion fix . http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=319949 ========================== XP_FileFilter.exe Enable/Disable Searching Files with unregistered extensions http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/xp_filefilter.htm © Doug Knox - 05/01/03 This code may be freely distributed. This Visual Basic Utility will allow you to enable searching for "Files Containing Text", without having to modify the Registry entries for individual file extensions. To use: Download http://www.dougknox.com/xp/utils/XP_FileFilter.zip the XP_FileFilter.zip file and save it to your hard drive (you may want to right click and use Save Target As). Open the ZIP file you just downloaded and extract the contents to your hard disk. Double click the EXE file that you extracted to run the utility. Some users report that this fix does not work with some type of files. In that case, the original utility to manually add a filter to one or more specific files can be downloaded here. http://www.dougknox.com/xp/scripts/xp_persisthandler.vbs Windows® XP - Search Problems http://www.dougknox.com/xp/tips/xp_bad_search.htm Windows® XP has a known issue for not finding a number of File Types when you do a Search for Files "containing text" or using the "A word or phrase in the file" option. This can be remedied for many file types, but not all. The cause is the lack of a PersistentHandler value in the Registry for this type of file. You can correct this by clicking Start, Run and entering REGEDIT Navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT and locating the entry for the file type in question. For example, .txt, .adm, .asp. Expand the branch for that file type, and if the PersistentHandler subkey does not exist, create it. Do this by clicking on the file extension key and going to Edit, New, Key. Name the Key, PersistentHandler. Click on the PersistentHandler sub-key. In Regedit's right pane, double click on the Default value and enter the following (copy and paste may be your best bet): {5e941d80-bf96-11cd-b579-08002b30bfeb} If the PersistentHandler sub-key does exist, do not change the default value. This could have very undesired consequences. Close Regedit and reboot the computer. This file type will now be searched for "A word or phrase in the file" type searches. An alternative is to download a small VB Script utility here. Save the file you just downloaded to your hard disk. Locate the file you just saved and double click it. Enter the file extension you wish to modify. If the PersistentHandler sub-key exists, no changes will be made. If it does not exist for the file type in question, the Registry will be updated accordingly. Reboot when you're finished with the file types you wish to change. Many users are switching to a program called Agent Ransack, http://www.agentransack.com, to work around Windows XP's Search limitations. ==================================== The ultimate in file searching utilities! http://www.agentransack.com/download.asp ================================= File Hunter http://digilander.libero.it/zancart/ http://digilander.libero.it/zancart/filehunter/odyframe.htm File Hunter 2003 is a Freeware program and is provided without any limitation at no charge to the user. If you find this program fast, convenient and useful, a little donation to the UNICEF or to your National Red Cross is encouraged by the author. File Hunter 2003 is a program designed for quick file searching. Although there's always a dedicated feature in the operating systems, sometimes it appears to be slow: File Hunter can offer a quicker file search. New features of build 1.50.01: optimized search routine. This program has been tested and works under Windows 95\98, Me, XP. ===================================== LookDisk http://www.nonags.com/nonags/filesearch.html http://www.fxsearch.com/ldw_eng/ LookDisk is a Freeware disk-utility with following functions: - search for files using multiple search parameters - search for text within any file (incl. Zip-Files) - search for duplicate files by content or name LookDisk can handle large amount of files without using lots of system resources. Search for files using various parameters (also within Zip-Files) Search for a text in any file (also within Zip-Files) Search for duplicate files by name or content (also within Zip-Files) Show disk overview User entries are saved and do not have to be re-entered each time LookDisk is started. The list of found files can be saved or printed. LookDisk can handle large amount of files without using lots of system resources. LookDisk is compatible with Window95/98/ME/2000/NT/XP. ================================== Search http://steveseymour.0catch.com/ Search Version 1.1. Find any text in any file anywhere on your system. Very fast search of ALL file types. Latest Version now searches inside ZIP's ( now searches CD's )