>>>>I am using BackupAssist backup software, which is very good by the way.
>>>>
>>>>By mistake I told BackupAssist to create a mirror backup of a directory within the original directory. This resulted in an infinite loop that blew up when the maximum path length was eventually reached. Now this chain of directory within directory cannot be deleted using Windows Explorer.
>>>>
>>>>Is there another way to delete it that anyone knows about?
>>>
>>>What was the folder name and how deep did it nest? IAC I didn't think there's a limit in the depth of nesting - only on the total length of the path name. If that's the case then the result is probably only marginally over the limit - try renaming the top level created folder to something shorter.....
>>>
>>>But if BackupAssist didn't trap for this I'm not sure I'd call it a good product :-}
>>
>>It has worked well otherwise, but this is a serious defect.
>
>So did you try re-naming ? Or maybe one of the other options here :http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;320081

Thank you for the help, Viv and Neal.

As I rename the top directories more appear at the bottom. Chkdsk did not find any problems.

I am going to move good files to another disk and reformat.

Alex