File won't have itself deleted

Question

System is Windows XP Pro SP3.

Defragmenter drew my attention to a file it couldn't defragment; 186k in 3 fragments. Windows Explorer says file is 0k. When I try to delete the file I get the error message

Unlocker Assistant doesn't pop up. I tried

chkdsk c: /f

but no avail. I can move and rename the folder so that the path length is just 5 characters long. I can't rename the file, but I can copy it. (Oh, great, now I have two of them! :-( )

How can I get rid of this file?

Answer 1

OK, I found a solution, which, as always, is simple in hindsight.

So I could move the folder and even the file, but at first I expected I wouldn't be able to move it across drive borders. But I can. So I moved it to an empty CompactFlash drive and tried to reformat that. It refused to format as FAT32, but it worked for FAT! Afterwards reformatted as FAT32 with no problems.