Force delete a directory

Question

I have a FAT32 SD card with a file on it, that, viewed in Windows the filename consists of a long string of nonsense.

Viewed in my Android phone's Linux terminal, ls -a shows nothing in the directory. When I try to delete the parent directory with rm -rf deleteme, it fails with "Directory not empty". When I try to delete/move in Windows 7, it says the filename would be too long and/or Explorer crashes. Windows disk check doesn't find anything wrong.

How can I delete this?

Answer 1

The cmd.exe command

dir /-N

shows the alternative DOS 8.3 character file names that are always present on FAT32. Use this name for the del command.

Answer 2

Also run top -u {your user name} and make sure that nothing's running that's using that directory when you're trying to delete it.

Hope that helps.