Ask MeCha: WinXP gurus, I need help! I have an apparently corrupted, empty folder that is preventing me from playing, uninstalling, or reinstalling a game.→[More:]

This week I've found that every time I tried to run a game called SimCity Societies, the computer would hang up and never finish loading the game. (Hard reboot required.) I started investigating, trying to repair the install, delete some stuff, etc, and traced the problem to a folder with a path that looks like this:

Program Files/Electronic Arts/SimCity Societies/Data/Graphics/Textures/Environment

Trying to uninstall caused the computer to hang just like playing it did. Trying to DELETE that folder gives an error message, "Environment could not be deleted because the directory is not empty." This despite the fact that the folder LOOKS empty, and I have "show hidden files/folders" turned on in Windows explorer.

I tried to delete it in safe mode, and I tried changing permissions (not something I understand very well) to "Full control" while logged in as Administrator. I tried deleting everything except the offending folder, but still could not reinstall (the game thinks it's installed, because of the fact it's in the registry I guess) nor uninstall. (I restored everything back from the recycle bin after trying this, so the game is still basically installed, it just won't run.)

I think the problem may have happened because the game allows you to download user-created "mods" which add buildings or textures or some such, and I'd tried downloading a few of those right before the game stopped working. I don't know where those are stored or what format they take, though, so I haven't been able to find them to try deleting just the downloaded files. And as I said, the one folder that won't delete appears to be empty, in spite of that error message.

What the heck do I do now? I don't mind just deleting everything and re-installing to another directory, (i.e. there's no data I'm trying to save) but since I can't do a proper uninstall, I don't know how to get Windows to reinstall the game.

Any help would be MOST appreciated... I've been wrestling with this for four days now, and have pretty much reached the end of my very limited knowledge.

(I have the WinXP Media Center Edition, btw.)