Failure to Clean Directory Message

[looney]

I got the following message when trying to clean freespace on a disk drive. I am using eraser 5.7 on windows 2000. The drive is a fat32 system with windows 95 on it attached as drive H:. It was not in anyway active in an operating system sense. And, the only open application was explorer which was looking at h:/. I also had my virus protection (mcaffee) turned off (yes, mcafee --- only because I get it free ).

I have several questions about these messages:

1. When it says H:/, does that mean it could not clean any of the cluster tips in the files in H:/, or that there was some bogus H:/ directory entry?

2. Is there anyway to go back and selectively do the clustertip operations on these directories? It seems I can only operate on the whole drive with regard to clustertips and freespace, or delete stuff.



Information:
Statistics:

Erased area = 376030 kB

Cluster tips = 300086 kB



Data written = 376030 kB

Write time = 2313.15 s

Write speed = 163 kB/s

Failures:
Error: Failed to clean directory entry H:\, could not prevent other programs from touching it.
Error: Failed to clean directory entry H:\PROGRA~1\ACCESS~1\, could not prevent other programs from touching it.
Error: Failed to clean directory entry H:\PROGRA~1\NETMEE~1\, could not prevent other programs from touching it.
Error: Failed to clean directory entry H:\WINDOWS\DESKTOP\DANIEL\, could not prevent other programs from touching it.

 

[Joel]

1. Yes, root of the drive cannot be cleaned. FAT32 works slightly different from NTFS, but I believe the error is benign.

2. Either you de-clustertip the whole drive or you erase the whole file (including the useful information). Well, STRICTLY speaking it is possible, but bearing in mind the age of Eraser, I don;t really want to touch the internals any more.

Joel