Delete similarly named files in multiple directories

Question

I have a server directory (windows) that contains somewhere around 25000 files in 3000 folders.

At some point in the past a program has gone through and added a file called .xconfig to almost all of the directories.

I'd like to delete these files as they are unnecessary and tend to confuse people when they are looking for actual config files.

Windows does not recognise these files in its search "feature" so I was wondering if there was another way to search for and delete these files - command line maybe?

Answer 1

Use del from the command line:

del /s .xconfig

The /s switch instructs del to recurse into all subdirectories. Execute the command with the working directory set to the top level directory which contains these files.

You are having no luck from the Explorer shell because it does not regard such a file (no name, only an extension) as being valid. But del is quite happy to delete such files.