delete D:\Windows

Dru2 said:

Odd because I've installed Windows plenty of times, and its never gotten "confused" on were to install the OS.

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The only problem I ever had was the boot partition being on the wrong drive. I was dual booting using two drives.

How about take ownership of the folder... give yourself full control... click the option to "apply the to all sub folders",etc.... then go get lunch while it does that.

When you come back you should be able to delete the folder.

You can do it from some kind of winpe . If your recovery sequence is working at admin cmd prompt type
reagentc -boottore
next restart will boot to winre
once in winre at cmd ptompt type notepad
when notepad pops up click file>save
you can use the save dialog to browse around and delete the unwanted files/folders

or you can do it with dism++ file explorer which ignores permissions

Winuser said:

I updated to Macrium X when the offer was a good deal. Even though I use it and like it, I feel that it's not worth being a subscription program. I prefer to pay for new version of a program if I feel the updates are worth me spending my money.

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When I upgraded to Macrium X, it was a God Friday special, where I would get a 4-pack subscription at half-price for life. The offer seemed to be to good to pass up. Although I'm not a fan of subscriptions, it seems as that is what is happening with a lot of other software now.

Run these commands:

NOTE: The commands below will give you access to all files on D:. If you need to operate on specific folders such as D:\Windows, substitute that path in the commands. Note too that if you specify the root of the drive (D:\), then there may be some errors trying to take ownership of stuff like the recycle bin or system volume information. This is OK!

After running these commands, you should have full access to the files on D:\

EDIT: Do this from an ELEVATED command prompt

C:\windows\system32\takeown /f D:\
icacls d:\ /grant %username%:F
C:\windows\system32\takeown /f D:\*.* /r /d y
icacls D:\*.* /T /grant %username%:F

I had one instance where a clean install of Win10 in 2016 caused a similar issue. Turned out the BIOS had a setting in it that during install it used both drives that were attached internally, it was for AHCI/RAID, problem found when detaching what was supposed to be D: caused failure of Windows booting. Things were corrected by changing the BIOS and installing again.

If the computer in the OP were mine I booted a Linux LiveUSB or LiveDVD and transfer all files desired be saved onto a USB drive of sufficient size. I prefer the Ubuntu/Debian flavors, Mint in particular, and they contain workable programs such as GPARTED [partition editor] good for manipulating the partitions or fully cleaning a drive. The drives work just as if installed in a computer albeit a bit slower.

wabbit said:

When I upgraded to Macrium X, it was a God Friday special, where I would get a 4-pack subscription at half-price for life. The offer seemed to be to good to pass up. Although I'm not a fan of subscriptions, it seems as that is what is happening with a lot of other software now.

Click to expand...

That's the deal I went with. I like Macrium but I'm not a fan of subscription software
I prefer to only pay for updates that I think is worth while updating to. I don't mind Microsoft 365 because I can share it with family and I like having all of my documents and pictures on OneDrive. I have my phone set to automatically upload my pictures to OneDrive.

pseymour said:

Well formatting a drive to delete one folder is a bit like putting a nail in with a sledgehammer. Sure you can do it, but then your wife says, "why are you always staring at my sister?!"

Oh, I think I might have mixed my metaphors.

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Well, he did mention he had at least one other partition that he wanted to get rid of. In any case, manipulating partitions without a backup is playing with fire, one slip and it's by-by data. If you have a good backup, then formatting is simple and sure. There are plenty of stories about people fooling around with partitions and losing everything, why risk it.

There are 3rd party applications that will zap most anything, some require a reboot to remove them before Windows starts protecting things.

gunrunnerjohn said:

Well, he did mention he had at least one other partition that he wanted to get rid of. In any case, manipulating partitions without a backup is playing with fire, one slip and it's by-by data. If you have a good backup, then formatting is simple and sure. There are plenty of stories about people fooling around with partitions and losing everything, why risk it.

Click to expand...

The only people that mentioned partitions were Winuser and you.