Share via

Windows: The network location cannot be reached when trying to delete local file system entries

  • Article

You try to delete a file system entry (NTFS) and get an error
"The network location cannot be reached. For information about network troubleshooting, see Windows Help."
(using del in cmd.exe) or
"An unexpected error is keeping you from deleting the folder. If you continue to receive this error, you can use the error code to search for help with this problem.
Error 0x800704D0: The network location cannot be reached. For information about network troubleshooting, see Windows Help."
(using explorer)

One possible cause for seeing this error message is, if the entry is a reparsepoint. You will see no indication about this when using dir to list the entries with command prompt, in explorer, the small arrow can give a hint about it. Windows creates reparsepoints for example for the folder structure that represents your DFS structure.

To check if this is your scenario, use "fsutil reparsepoint query <filesystemobject>". If you confirm this as the cause of the error, you can use "fsutil reparsepoint delete <filesystemobject>" to remove the reparse information on the object. After that, you can delete it by normal means.

Reference:
fsutil - see TechNet documentation