Tl;DR: There is an infinitely nested folder structure that isn't a junction that I cannot delete, rather only move around the same disk (NTFS in a Hyper-V VM).

My former colleague (that left) migrated some file shares from Windows Server 2008 to 2019 via robocopy. Today I was tasked to back up the shared to Azure using Azure Backup (MARS). After multiple failures I have discovered that there is an profile redirection share (that is now just a file share) that has a folder "Application Data" under the "Admin" user (in the Appdata\Local folder) that you cannot delete or go into until the end - it just contains infinitely more nested "Application Data". I was able to cut and paste the folder out of the way in the same disk to allow for the backup to work, but I still CANNOT delete it!

Some things I've tried and some funny properties about the folder:

• its NOT a junction (symlink) - dir and Junction (from SysInternals) do not see it as a junction
• each sub-folder can be renamed - I've renamed like 20 nested folders to "1" to no avail (continued sub folders are still named "Application Data")
• tried robocopy from an empty folder to this one as target with various parameters to no avail - just goes on infinitely
• none of the CMD or PowerShell commands work
• checking for alternative streams - none exist
• if you Shift Delete it in Explorer - just crashes. Same happens in cmd "rmdir" with certain parameters. I do see some random files that explorer tries to delete along the way (before crashing
• It weighs 0 bytes (size and size on disk), has 257 folders (integer limit I guess) and 0 files - in explorer file properties

What I have NOT tried, but will probably works:

• move data to another drive (its a VM on Hyper-V) and throw this one away (format or delete VHD) - just a PITA to do
• use some WSL or some cygwin-bash to delete the folder

File system is NTFS. Currently I moved it to D:\deleteme.

EDIT:

I am more curious of what the issue is than trying to solve it...

EDIT 2:

Windows-Kernel-Explorer - crashes the server

List of other tools I've tried that failed: FileExile, 7zFM, Long Path eraser, Fastcopy, unlocker, bynow - all just crash or go on forever (7z and Bynow)

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SOLVED:

It WAS and VERY deep nested folder issue (in 10s of thousands). I should have let bynow run for like an hour at least (thank you /u/alex-van-02 for the wonderful program for deleting folders with multiple threads).

Full details in this comment bellow.

Thank you /u/gremolata for your perseverance and suggestions.

Thank you /u/joemelonyeah for the superuser find.

Thanks to all for the many suggestions! I hope that a random Internet fellow will find this useful.