Thanks to everyone for your help..
I could not work out how to umount / so I could run fsck(as was suggested)..
So I just switched off the PC (not very elegant, I am sure there must be a better and safer way) then when it started and was mounting the drive it asked to do a full check to which I said yes.. It found errors and I then entered the password for root to get into maintainance mode and ran "fsck", this found illegal filenames to files that were not visable using any "ls" switches that I could find.. it then repaired the illegal filenames and then I was able to kill the directory..
Lets hope I never have that again..
Thanks again..
Later..
