Windows 7: deleting undeletable folders/files.

i have 3 or 4 folder which are giving me an error message saying something about me not having permission. ive tried taking ownership and giving myself full permissions but i stll cant delete them.

Can you list them here? Once you take ownership of a file or folder you also have to right click on the properties to make sure the "read only" box remains unchecked too. That will prevent deletiing them if that remains checked off.

Some files and folders under "C:\users\user name" become unavailable to change if any are found there. In that circumstance you might actually have to delete the entire admin or user account in order to remove them. Windows has them locked up as reserved.

Read only does not prevent a file from being deleted.

they're windows xp installation folders on my secondary hard drive (d drive). the folder names are 8d2331f1b822608de007e8c93a1d, 53309402d2af3d21870df85c, fbaa350e425955e6ccb19055.

nevermind i used the command prompt from the 7 install dvd. worked great.

For folders it will. It depends on what folders there too. Windows protected or simply from a old software installation. You'll find this even more true when needing to delete all of the sub folders before you can remove the Windows.old folder entirely at times. Some of the subs may end up being read only and have to be taken care of first there.

Glad to hear you have that solved. Gw2 Even while those were on a separate drive from a previous version they were still being seen as protected. Once you booted live you bypassed the Windows restrictions.

The alternative if no other files were present and you wanted to clean up the drive would be to reformat D entirely simply to insure the complete removal of the past XP install there. Something else to point you to here for future reference is the "Add "Take Ownership" to Explorer Right-Click Menu in Win 7 or Vista ".

It's a free registry mod for add the option and works quite well for many hard to remove files and folders at times. Add "Take Ownership" to Explorer Right-Click Menu in Win 7 or Vista - How-To Geek

Actually, no. Read only is not causing that. Read only never applies to folders, ever. And Read only does not stop deletion, this is very testable.

You may want to review the MS article 326549 "You cannot view or change the Read-only or the System attributes of folders in Windows Server 2003, in Windows XP, in Windows Vista or in Windows 7" to see what I was trying to explain. You cannot view or change the Read-only or the System attributes of folders in Windows Server 2003, in Windows XP, in Windows Vista or in Windows 7

As a general rule the attributes for the files and folders within a main folder are what are effected by the read only box and why you have to remove sub folders and files before you can see the Windows/old folder removed completely if a previous installation was on when it was created. That was precisely what was seen when performing an upgrade repair install on one of the RC installations where you had to go into all sub folders and clean up the files there before the mail folder could be removed by unchecking the read only on the subs too.

Another exampple presently seen in 7 is the Program Data folder where you denied access due to it being a Windows protected archive. You will also note the "hidden" attribute is also set.