windows xp - what can cause a folder to become indestructible?

I have a directory that I want to delete, but windows (xp home sp3) is giving me the run-around and the folder is now effectively indestructible.

Attempts to open the folder, either via explorer or cmd.exe are met with 'd:/temp/foo Is Not Accessible. Access is denied'.

Attempts to delete the folder result in 'Cannot delete foo: The directory is not empty'

So I can't delete it because supposedly it's not empty, but windows won't let me in it for some reason, so I can't clean it out first. There's nothing in it of consequence, and basically I just want to delete it at this point.

Thinking that some other process must have a lock on it, I used the SysInternals 'handles' and Process Explorer to look for open handles with the directory name. These turned up no matches. (The directory name is not actually 'foo', it is something more unique but 'foo' is easier to type here).

I put the machine through a restart, and the problem persists. I did a search for the folder name with regedit, to see what other apps might be aware of it. No match.

The properties dialog was mildly interesting. The Read-Only attribute is 'semi-checked', i.e., the grayish check mark you get when some parts are and some parts aren't. Naturally I immediately unchecked this, and tried to delete the folder. No go. Opening properties again reveals the gray check mark next to Read-Only has returned. All the stats, size, size on disk, files, folders, all these are zero. There do not appear to be any shares on the folder, so that's not it either.

Finally, I tried opening the partition's properties, and running the Tools/Error Checking utility. This didn't turn up any problems either.

Fwiw, this directory was created by [a popular gui zip tool] when I tried to unpack a tar-and-zipped archive created on another system with command line utils. The archive was definitely corrupt, but I've never seen such a file do anything worse than crash the zip app, and certainly never leave permanent glitches in the file system.

So what else can possibly be going on to make this folder behave this way?

Answer

I could also be security. Right click the subdirectory, go to Properties, then Security. What users/groups have rights to the subdirectory? Try and add Everyone and give all rights, then save and see if you can open the subdirectory. If you can, try and delete it.