FIXED “The requested security information is either unavailable or can’t be displayed”

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Problem

Two folders on a file server I administer had been created with a space at the end of the folder name. This is not allowed in Windows, but can something happen.

If I tried to delete these folders but I got the message “Could not find the item”

If I tried to view the security of the folder I got the message “The requested security information is either unavailable or can’t be displayed”

Solution

I found it was possible to delete the folders via a CMD prompt using the command;

rd “\\?\C:\path to bad sub dir\bad dir “

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21072767/windows-7-cant-delete-a-folder-with-a-trailing-space

12 thoughts on “FIXED “The requested security information is either unavailable or can’t be displayed””

  2. Thank you very much for this, i was struggling to delete a directory for 2 hours and this was the final command which actually worked. 🙂

    Reply

  3. elevated CMD vs Elevated Powershell
    had this issue on a 2012R2 File server – didn’t try non-elevated of either.

    appreciate the command and it resolved the issue for me – thought I was crazy!
    all old commands 8.3 version and others not working – (8.3 disabled on this server)

    Reply

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