You might be able to use the command prompt. I might be off on some of the details of the procedure, but try this:
- Open the Start Menu and in the text box, type
cmd.exe and hit Enter (or open the command prompt using your preferred method)
- Switch to the network drive by typing
Z: (where Z is the letter of the network drive)
- Change to the parent directory of the directory you're trying to delete using
cd path\to\parent\directory
- Delete the directory using
rmdir /S giantdir
For example, if you want to delete the directory O:\MG\WTF\BBQ\SOMANYFILES:
C:\Documents And Settings\Me> O:
O:> cd MG\WTF\BBQ
O:\MG\WTF\BBQ> rmdir /S SOMANYFILES
Or now that I think about it, I think you could just do
C:\Documents And Settings\Me> O:
O:> rmdir /S MG\WTF\BBQ\SOMANYFILES
but you would miss out on the chance to see Windows spell out OMGWTFBBQ in terminal font ;-)
By the way, rmdir (or del) does not move things to the Recycle Bin, it just deletes them, so be careful not to delete things you don't really want to.