Windows 7 Delete heavily nested folder structure

Question

I was running a node script that went awry and created a folder structure like so:

\myfolder
    \myfolder
    \file.txt
        \myfolder
            \file.txt
                \myfolder
                \file.txt
                    \etc.

This is nested to an extent of over 300 times, I would estimate, if not more.

I cannot del it because it is too long a file path.

I cannot use robocopy because it actually freezes around this point:

I cannot use FileAssassin as it is only for files apparently.

I have tried using the .bat script from this answer How do I delete a folder which is nested quite deep and avoid "File name too long"? , and it is still running, but I fear at the level of recursion that the folder is at even if every single subfolder was renamed to one character it would still be longer than 260 (or whatever the limit is).

How do I remove this problem from my filesystem?

EDIT

DeepRemove is successful! Victory! 3,421 levels of recursion. Jeesh! I'll be more careful with nodejs (or any programmatic modification of the filesystem) from now on, esp. when recursion is involved!

score 8 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 16 '14 at 15:43

8

I have not tried this software but you may want to review it and give it a go.

https://deepremove.codeplex.com/

Good Luck.

answered Feb 16 '14 at 15:43

Jim

164

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:16

For posterity I'm sharing SiloSix's solution.

He created a bat file to move the folder structure around and delete small chunks at a time. It's simple and beautiful. (I also had several thousands folders to deal with.)

It worked on my problem in less than 2 minutes.

REM https://superuser.com/users/151251/silosix
D:

REM  CD deep into the problem directory...
cd D:\a\calculator.sikuli\calculator.sikuli\calculator.sikuli\calculator.sikuli

REM Move the rest of the problem dir to a temporary parent folder
move /-Y calculator.sikuli D:\b

REM CD to the temp folder
cd D:\b

REM delete the section of problem-dir above
rd /s/q D:\a\calculator.sikuli

REM Move the rest of problem-dir back to origin
move /-Y calculator.sikuli D:\a

REM Call the script until problem directory is gone!
call D:\remdirs2.bat

The REM tags are just comments, they can be left in or taken out as you please. (In case the next person to find this isn't versed in bat scripting.)

Windows 7 Delete heavily nested folder structure

2 Answers2