You cannot remove folders in a Windows Server 2003-based DFS environment

In a Microsoft Windows Server 2003-based Distributed File System (DFS) environment, you may experience the following symptoms:

• When you try to remove folders, you receive a message that states that the folders cannot be accessed. You cannot remove the folders.
• You may find folders that have morphed. In this situation, the original folder's properties dialog box no longer has a Security tab. When you try to modify the discretionary access control list (DACL) for the original folder or try to take ownership of the original folder, you may receive the following error message:
  Access Denied.
  Note Morphed directories are folders and files that have replicated to other servers and are exact copies of one another. When the File Replication Service (FRS) cannot determine which of two folders is most recent, it creates a duplicate folder. These folders are named FolderName_NTFRS_GUIDname, where FolderName is the name of the original folder and GUIDname represents a unique GUID for the morphed folder.

This problem may occur if you have configured replication on the DFS root and DFS links.

To resolve this problem, use one of the following methods, depending on the situation that you want to correct.

Method 1: Use the Fsutil command so that you can remove the folders

If you cannot remove folders and you find morphed directories, use the Fsutil command to remove the reparse point that is associated with the folders. The Fsutil command is included in Windows Server 2003. The syntax of the Fsutil command to remove the reparse point is as follows:For example, to remove the reparse point that is associated with a folder named MyShare, use the following command:After you remove the reparse point, you can remove the folders.

Note You may have to restart the DFS service for this method to work. Or, you may have to restart the DFS server. This method also resolves issues in which DFS roots were incorrectly removed and have invalid junction point (reparse point) folders that previously held link information.

Method 2: Restore the missing Security tab

If the Security tab is not present, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, click Run, type Dfsgui.msc, and then click OK.
2. Click the DFS target link to the shared resource that contains the morphed folder.
3. On the Action menu, click Stop Replication.
4. Right-click the DFS target link to the shared resource that contains the morphed folder, and then click Delete Link.
5. When you are prompted to confirm the removal of the DFS target link, click Yes.
6. Restart all the DFS servers that host the DFS target link that you removed.
   
   The changes replicate to all the DFS servers.
7. Log on to the computer that contains the morphed folder. Then, determine whether the original folder or the morphed folder is most recent.
8. If the morphed folder is most recent, rename the morphed folder to the original folder name and remove the original folder. If the original folder is most recent, remove the morphed folder and keep the original folder.

You can now create a new DFS target link to the shared resource that contains this folder.

For more information about other DFS related concepts and issues, click the following article numbers to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: