Infinitely Recursive Directory Tree

[Reverend Jim]

Here is a question I do not recall being addressed. In the last week I have had to completely rebuild my system. Following a lengthy install and configuration I had to look for the locatiuon of a settings file for an application (to make a backup). Being a dinosaur, I prefer to do this from the command line so I did the following

C:\>cd \users\jim\appdata
C:\Users\Jim\AppData>dir *inspiron* /s

In a very short time I started getting multiple lines of

The directory name C:\Users\Jim\AppData\Local\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Recovery\Last Active is too long.

Upon further checking I discovered that I seemed to have a recursive directory. I suspect that one of the entries was pointing back on itself so that the directory tree was effectively infinite. The problem is in the AppData\Local folder. A listing of the entries at this level shows

 Directory of C:\Users\Jim\AppData\Local

2012-03-30  12:35    <DIR>          .
2012-03-30  12:35    <DIR>          ..
2012-03-27  22:01    <DIR>          {050CAF75-5613-460F-BA72-014A6E41ACF6}
2012-03-28  13:02    <DIR>          {1D0110D3-61AD-4D4F-A99F-77B21023807E}
2012-03-30  06:30    <DIR>          {2B8150D2-D4BB-43CA-979B-760BA277B825}
2012-03-29  05:49    <DIR>          {308C1C85-C323-4423-A3E7-11FD2A9997B9}
2012-03-28  10:01    <DIR>          {50C9FA41-8D3F-4B92-8BB0-713B045ED48F}
2012-03-27  10:00    <DIR>          {70050B67-D3DF-4D7A-A3DA-3315A1905FF3}
2012-03-28  13:47    <DIR>          {A43BF7CD-1BE4-4B77-90F5-CA9586D76BFF}
2012-03-29  17:50    <DIR>          {C5E780B7-A294-4753-973F-3F653C6C6F24}
2012-03-30  06:30    <DIR>          {CAC314B1-F3B7-416E-BEFF-AC6C9370BFE4}
2012-03-28  13:51    <DIR>          {F2AB3D3B-CF02-4570-BF2E-B56800962B12}
2012-03-27  17:00    <DIR>          ACD Systems
2012-03-27  18:47    <DIR>          Adobe
2012-03-26  23:21    <DIR>          assembly
2012-03-26  23:11    <DIR>          DDMSettings
2012-03-28  08:34    <DIR>          Diagnostics
2012-03-26  23:18    <DIR>          Downloaded Installations
2012-03-26  22:33    <DIR>          http___www.fosoft.net_
2012-03-30  08:40    <DIR>          Microsoft
2012-03-27  21:53    <DIR>          Microsoft Games
2012-03-28  13:11    <DIR>          Microsoft Help
2012-03-27  15:45    <DIR>          Microsoft_Corporation
2012-03-26  21:25    <DIR>          Mozilla
2012-03-26  22:44    <DIR>          PackageAware
2012-03-29  18:30    <DIR>          PasswordSafe
2012-03-28  11:36    <DIR>          Phat_Chants_Software
2012-03-27  13:11    <DIR>          Programs
2012-03-30  07:46    <DIR>          Songbird2
2012-03-30  13:07    <DIR>          Temp
2012-03-27  15:32    <DIR>          VirtualStore
2012-03-29  20:21    <DIR>          VMware
2012-03-30  06:30    <DIR>          Windows Live
2012-03-27  16:56             6,656 DCBC2A71-70D8-4DAN-EHR8-E0D61DEA3FDF.ini
2012-03-27  13:26           102,856 GDIPFONTCACHEV1.DAT
               2 File(s)        109,512 bytes
              33 Dir(s)  27,187,662,848 bytes free

I have no idea how to correct this without (possibly) making the problem worse. At the moment my system seems to function just fine but I don't know that this will not cause me grief down the road. Any suggestions?

[Begginnerdev]

The only way I know of would be to single out each directory and find the directory pointing back to it's self.

This would be time consuming, but you would be able to find the problem, then just remove the loopback.

[Reverend Jim]

My apologies for posting this in the wrong forum. I've taken a disk image so I ended up just deleting and recreating Application Data.

[Reverend Jim]

More info if anyone is interested. The folders

C:\Users\Jim\Appdata
C:\ProgramData\Application Data

among others and actually JUNCTIONS rather than directories. Normally these folders (JUNCTIONS) have permissions set to deny the ability to list the folder contents. Somehow (not saying if it was my fault and not saying it wasn't) these permissions gor altered. Once I added DENY as stated the infinite recursion stopped.