Utility to remove file/folder from directory.

[nickedw]

A folder is corrupt/infected and points to itself. So subfolder is its own parent. Utility could just purge entry from directory table. Then Diskchk can be used to fix misallocations.

[f0dder]

How did this happen? Which filesystem? You're mentioning "infected" - is it possible that the disk structure is OK, but self-pointing is done by a (rootkit) driver?

Poking directly at the file structures isn't something for the faint of heart, especially not if we're talking NTFS which is largely undocumented... and you definitely don't want to do it on a mounted filesystem

[DougalS]

A folder is corrupt/infected and points to itself. So subfolder is its own parent. Utility could just purge entry from directory table. Then Diskchk can be used to fix misallocations.

You aren't referring to the C:\ProgramData\Application Data in Windows 7 by any chance? This is a (multiple) redirected folder that points to itself (I don't know why, but MS thought it was a good idea). It may be because C:\ProgramData\ is a target of C:\Users\All Users, so legacy apps that use "C:\Users\AllUsers\Application Data" get pointed to C:\ProgramData folder.
There are a lot of redirected folder in Vista/7 (and some even in XP), but I think only Vista/7 have ones that point to themselves.
Cheers