Cannot delete folder, going insane

Berton · Jan 31, 2024

Yes, life and technology has changed. Both of my SFF cases running Win10 don't use NVMe drives and have no extra room for a second SATA drive, neither HDD or SSD. My main desktops could have more but I have only a second HDD for Data storage in them. I also have 2 x 4TB USB drives on one and a 2TB RAID 1 setup on my Router.

zaarin_2003 · Jan 31, 2024

Ok thanks all! I decided to just move what I wanted to keep out of the drive, format it, and put it back. Hopefully the permissions thing won’t crop up again. If it does I’ll be back!

Wisewiz · Jan 31, 2024

@zaarin_2003

Great job, well done!

Winuser · Feb 1, 2024

Wisewiz said:
Is there any reason why simply putting all drives except the intended target OFFLINE in Disk Management wouldn't work just as well as physically disconnecting or removing?

I think that would only hide the drive from Windows and would still be accessible in the BIOS when the computer starts or restarts.

Wisewiz · Feb 1, 2024

Winuser said:
I think that would only hide the drive from Windows and would still be accessible in the BIOS when the computer starts or restarts.

That makes sense. I was afraid there was something wrong with my idea. It seemed too easy to be right. Thanks for thinking about it.

LesFerch · Feb 2, 2024

Sorry I'm late for the party on this one (yes, I know you already formatted the drive), but an easy solution for this situation is to open a Cmd prompt with PowerRun.

You'lll then have TrustedInstaller level access. Assuming your old Windows drive is mounted as D: you can remove the old folders with the RD command in the PowerRun elevated Cmd window. For example: rd /s /q d:\windows

If you prefer a GUI, you can load up a file manager, such as Explorer++ from PowerRun to access and/or delete whatever you like (be careful).

jimbo45 · Mar 3, 2024

@zaarin_2003

Have I missed something here --the other answers seem horribly complicated to what should really be a trivial problem.

the simplest way I'd imagine would be just to boot any Windows install disk and choose repair system -->command mode.

When in command mode simply start diskpart, select the windows disk (select disk xxxx), list vol, select vol xxxx, assign letter=Q

exit disk part. Now simply delete the file or folder (del q:\thestupidfile)

If that fails - no reason why it should - but if it does - boot up say a live image distro -- Linux Mint is probably the simplest for Windows users, in the GUI (the file explorer) just browse to the windows directory you want to delete and delete it.

Using a Windows install disk should be fine -- if you have Macrium (the stand alone recovery) you can boot that up and use the console (console icon at bottom) to do the same thing (diskpart etc).

cheers
jimbo