I'm working on a friend's WinXP system with about a dozen files and folders that behave weirdly. Can't delete them, copy them, nor move 'em. They appear to be phantoms of the file system; that is, their names appear in the directory, but the associated objects have no properties. The bad files are in an user's MyDocs folder on the C: drive, where WinXP is also installed. The user is an Administrator, with full privileges. The good news: he doesn't need the data. I merely want to delete these "phantoms" and clean up the NTFS file structure, because I suspect that these strange file-things are responsible for the misbehavior of a video editing application. My hunch is that the NTFS master file table is broken. If so, the bad news gleaned from the web is that my only way out is to reformat the disk and reload the system. This ordeal I hope to avoid. Can anyone suggest a tool or method that will locate all the "phantoms" on the C: drive, and repair the relevant NTFS structures? (Recovery of phantoms optional.) SYMPTOMS (1) Except for the filesystem glitches described here, the computer works just fine. (2) No malware detected by three scanners: AVG Free, Norton System Scan, Sunbelt VIPRE Rescue Scanner. (3) KillBox fails; message: "The file does not seem to exist". (4) A double-click on one of the bad folders yields a glimpse of what looks like the correct contents. But within a second or two, the window opened on the phantom folder vanishes -- just disappears, as though I had clicked on the close button in the upper right corner. No message, no nothing, just poof/gone. (5) For subsequent discussion, refer to this representative directory structure: TopDir\ (the parent directory, contains the rest) BadDir\ (a "phantom" directory, behaving badly) bad.file (a file within BadDir\) OKDir\ (a folder that behaves normally) ... etc ... (6) Ordinary Explorer Copy/Paste operation (ctrl+C/ctrl+V) fails on BadDir\; message: "Cannot copy file: Cannot read from the source file or disk." (7) Within a CMD.EXE window, after "cd TopDir\": (7a) "dir /q /s" lists all files and subfiles of TopDir\, as expected. However: whereas the owner of OKDir\ appears as expected, the owner of BadDir\ is given as "...". Stranger still: bad.file's owner appears as expected. (7b) "dir BadDir\bad.file" fails; message: "The system cannot find the file specified." (7c) "cd BadDir" fails; message: "The system cannot find the path specified." (7d) "cacls BadDir" fails; message: "The system cannot find the file specified." (8) In Explorer, right-click -> Properties of BadDir\ shows size 0 bytes, and the create/mod/access dates are all blank -- even though the "dir" command in (7a) shows a mod date, as expected.