The name you specified "<." will cause problems since it contains a restricted character. You may not be able to rename or access such a file. This may be part of your problem. A serious concern is "why did the name change." To delete files that have invalid characters, you can use wildcards in the delete command. Go to a command prompt in the folder where the files are and issue the command "del *.*" - this assumes that you want to delete everything in that folder. Let us know what happens. Peter ---------------------------------- [log in to unmask] -----Original Message----- Recently I've been downloading a lot of divx movies from Usenet and to save space on my laptop I moved the avi to my Maxtor One Touch, this happened around Nov 16 and I don't know what I did but the file somehow got corrupted and it will not delete. I've tried rebooting into Safe Mode and but it won't let me delete it, I've tried cut and paste into the recycle bin, no go. At first the file was Iceage.avi then it turned into an unknown file titled <. When trying to delete it I would get filename or directory name or volume label syntax is incorrect. I've tried defrag but it won't let me complete it, I've tried Chekdisc and nothing happens, and now I have a bunch of files that are labeled gobbly gook, strange symbols, some of the folders are semi-transparent and I really want to get rid of this folder since it has over 170 GB and I at a loss. One more thing its using fat 32. PCSOFT maintains many useful files for download visit our download web page at: http://freepctech.com/downloads.shtml