Can't Delete A Windows Folder. Help?

Hi Saga.

Windows is annoying with random permission errors, etc. and tries to restrict even admin accounts which is annoying when you wanna get something done. If you right click it and look through the properties/security settings I believe there may be a choice to force yourself to take ownership of the directory or somesuch, but if you want a method that's basically foolproof follow this procedure:

1. Download the PsTools suite and put it on your desktop. Extract it to its own folder called PSTools.
   
   
2. Open an elevated command prompt by searching for "cmd", right clicking and choosing "Run as Admin".
   
   
3. Type the following into that command prompt:
   
   %USERPROFILE%\Desktop\PSTools\PsExec.exe -shi cmd
   
   
4. This will spawn another command prompt in the context of the "system" user which has very comprehensive root privs. You can proceed to try and delete the troublesome folder from there. For example if the folder is C:\whatever then:
   
   rmdir /S /Q C:\whatever

Obviously you need to be careful as these are powerful commands so make sure you delete the right thing.

There might be a more elegant way via the GUI but I don't have much tolerance for the nonsense layers Windows keeps trying to hide things behind and the "System" account is able to get things done.

Hops this helps. Cheers.

Saga: That sucks. Usually all things retain access for SYSTEM. Before trying step 4, try putting these in between:




Then:

quote Saga

I'm one step away from getting a darned Ubuntu Live CD to get rid of all these stupid folders.

Yeah, that wouldn't be a bad option at all.

Windows 7 Ultimate (64 Bit).

I tried the taking ownership method and permissions modification thing. I did it via the GUI first (Properties > Security > Advanced to change ownership, and modifying permissions in the same Security tab as earlier). It works - to certain extent. The changes don't spread through files (even though I clicked to apply the ownership to all contained files and folders). I have found that I can delete files if I go into the folder, and do it manually to every folder. But there's literally over a thousand folders here so that's outrageous.

I also think Dynamite's pre-step 4 commands are to change ownership and permissions. So we can say I tried that twice (via GUI and command line) with no luck).

My CLI commands attempted to take ownership of the folder and all of its contents, then assign full permissions to the SYSTEM user who would in theory then have permissions to delete them. If they didn't work it's difficult to imagine any other method, such as GUI, working.

If the volume was mounted in Linux with necessary permissions the root user could do whatever operation they wanted on them. A simple rm /mnt/drive/Windows -rf would take care of it.

I'm not really a Windows user and it's for reasons like this.

This is one of the most annoying and irritating features of windows, I can't see how protecting redundant system files from a past OS is useful to preserving the current OS.

There are 2 relatively easy ways you can take care of this:
1) Just copy out the files you need and format the drive, given this might not be time efficient if you have alot of data on the drive you want to retain you can try the second option, which also unfortunately can be time consuming, but its alot more automated.

2) Find the folder in which the system files are in, typically you would want to get to the root folder so that you don't have to bother changing multiple file properties manually. Next go to properties and select the security tab. From there you want to click "edit" and then "add." In the context field that pops type "everyone" (minus the quotations). Click okay. Now with everyone selected in the group of users field (should be by default anyway) check the "full control" check box under "allow". Click okay on all the dialogues and you should now have permission to delete anything within the folder for which you changed the permissions.

I'm assuming number 2 should work straight away considering you're using windows 7, if it doesn't though get back to me and we'll work on inheriting the folder permissions to sub folders. Best of luck!

Didn't mention formatting since I wasn't sure if Saga had alot of data that would need backing up. When formatting that I'd recommend ticking the quick format box.

The permissions solutions should've fixed the problem. One thing that ikachi left out of solution 2 was to remove users (typically System, all users, trusted installer, and the admins groups) that had a deny permission set as Deny completely overrides Allow. If System and sagas user account had deny set next to Everyone having allow full control, she'd still need to do a big amount of messing aroung.