Could not find this item

**Chickasaw** · 10-09-2010

Friends, I have downloaded some files from internet on my computer from Firefox browser. I saved it into My download directory. Now when I tried to delete those files it shows me message saying that Could not find this item.The file is not located in that location and verify the location of your file and try again.

One of my friend told me to run chkdsk on my drive and it cleans the file. I don't have any idea why this is happening to me. Can you have the reason behind it?

Dr. V · 10-09-2010

There is possibility that you have already deleted that that file and that’s why it is not able to locate the file to delete it. If you are running many RAM intensive applications then at that time window cannot automatically update itself. Therefore when you delete any file then the explorer retains its original state.

That means if I delete any file from my computer then it will remain in the explorer until it refreshes itself. And if you again tried to delete that item then you will see such kind of error message.

**SalVatore** · 10-09-2010

In such small issues the best way to get out of this is to reboot the system and again try to do the things. The error you have told is basically because of refreshing issue. If you reboot the system then it will flush your RAM. And again when you try to access the file that you wanted to delete, you will not find that. Because it is already deleted and the file you wanted to delete earlier was only at RAM.

**jesse** · 10-09-2010

Lack of available RAM may also cause this problem. I can produce this problem on any machine at any time. I just have to run sql app which has a large database. Therefore it consumes a large amount of RAM memory (Even if RAM available). Your explorer does not refresh automatically if physical Ram usage is above 4.8Gig on a machine with 6Gig. If this reduces to 4.8Gig then Windows will start refreshing automatically.

**Lillebror** · 10-09-2010

I also came across this problem a few months back. When I was trying to delete a folder then it shows me the same message that says "Could not find this item". I tried everything including chkdsk, rebuilding index, safe mode and refreshing then rebooting. None of them worked for me.

After all this I tried running DOS command. Where I typed attrib -s-h-r <folder name> /S /R. Then del<folder name>. Firstly I thought that it didn’t worked but when I looked at the folder in the drive I found it was not there.

**Calvin K** · 10-09-2010

You can follow the following steps to delete the file.

Go to run and type cmd, press enter. This will open command prompt.
Now browse to the folder containing the buggy file.
Type 'dir /x' to obtain the 8.3 formatted filename.
now you can delete the file using the 8.3 filename, e.g. 'del NEWDOC~1.DOC'

I hope this information will help you and other users also.

pixelbob · 11-09-2010

If you have an antivirus in your system then it is possible that it detected that the file is a virus or malware and automatically deletes it after you download it. Try checking your antivirus history if its recorded there.

**mesterio** · 12-09-2010

There may be virus in your system which is not allowing you to delete any files from your drive. And you also know that there is only one solution to virus that is antivirus. If your current antivirus cannot detect the virus then you should update your antivirus. And again scan your system. Delete all the afected files if they are no longer needed.